


Hamon

by Maldoror_Chant



Category: One Piece
Genre: M/M, Non-Romantic Romance, Swords, Violence, carnivorous rabbits, tough guys getting together
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-26
Updated: 2017-08-26
Packaged: 2018-12-19 23:03:42
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 35,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11908044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maldoror_Chant/pseuds/Maldoror_Chant
Summary: Hamon: From Japanese, lit. 'blade pattern'. The pattern on the steel that characterizes a katana blade, acquired during the folding, forging and tempering process.





	1. Kitae

**Author's Note:**

> Timeline: Before Skypiea, so Robin's just come aboard and Zoro's still mighty suspicious of her.
> 
>  _Kitae_ \- folding the metal layer upon layer and hammering it into a single, hardened shape

The first real notice Zoro took of Sanji aboard the Baratie was when the cook was slammed through the Straw Hat's table by an elderly chef with a peg leg. 

In the months that followed, Zoro would get to know his new crewmate and see him in all sorts of situations. It didn't take him long to conclude that slammed through a table was the look that suited Sanji the best.

But Zoro had other concerns. Shortly after that first meeting, a big black sword had nearly sawed him in half, cutting him away from his previous delusions like a particularly violent form of therapy. In the months of gruelling training that followed, Zoro had the time for some soul-churning self-contemplation. Most of his introspection was about fighting, living, dying and the states in between. Zoro's soul folded in on itself and hardened into his greatest weapon, just as Mihawk had foretold. 

Reflections on personal matters stayed few and far between; he had neither the time nor inclination for those. But events on board the Going Merry did force him at various stages to contemplate the nature of friendship, nakama, adventure and attraction. 

Ah yes, attraction...Zoro had never been attracted to men. He'd assumed that somewhere behind his obsession with becoming the best, there lurked some attraction to women, but after being shacked up on a ship with some very pretty specimens for months on end, Zoro learned that he could rely on them, even like them, but he did not feel attracted to them. 

Eventually, Zoro had to conclude that he was attracted to only two things in this life. Swords; long straight steel, deadly beauty, death's caress on a razor's edge, the release when resistance parted before their combined strength...Yes, he was attracted to swords, and to idiotic, trash-talking cooks with deadly kicks and a serious attitude problem who looked really good when slammed through tables.

The Grand Line spanned the globe in an array of bizarre places and people, so Zoro had to assume that somewhere in those seas was a guy with a more fucked-up sexuality than his. He hoped he never met the creep.

Beyond that conclusion, Zoro had not the faintest notion of ever acting on this attraction - the idea hadn't even started to cross his mind - until the day Sanji suggested the trade-off.

"What trade-off?" Zoro asked suspiciously. The word wasn't what was suspicious; it was the way Sanji had silently followed him into the gun deck when Zoro went to put away his sword-cleaning equipment, a few hours after dinner. There was a faint sense of tension emanating from the man as he leaned against a stanchion and pulled at his cigarette, poisoning the enclosed space with the sharp scent of tobacco smoke.

"Trade-off. The trade-off. You can't be that ignorant. Are you sure you're a pirate?"

Zoro had been wondering if trade-off was some kind of lingo for a fighting challenge; now he was sure of it. He idly twisted his right wrist first one way and then the other, warming up, eyes not leaving the cook. "Yeah, I'm a pirate. I've been a pirate for the last few months. Before that, I was a-"

"Pirate-hunter. Right, I forgot." 

Zoro examined him carefully; that had almost sounded like an apology, when put through the Sanji-filters. 

Sanji scowled at nothing. "Lucky you, running around in big cities, chasing pirates in places where there're a lot of comforts to be had. Inns. Barmaids...But come on, you must have heard of the trade-off. You know? You scratch my back, I scratch yours?"

...Okay. Apparently Sanji wasn't looking for a fight, just someone to scratch his back. Metaphorically speaking, it was to be hoped. Now, if only Zoro could figure out what-

"You have no clue what I'm talking about."

"Why don't you ask me straight out instead of dancing your bloody fandangos around the question?"

"Fuck, forget it. It's just..." Sanji kept flicking his cigarette, though the ash wasn't having much time to build up. He wasn't looking at Zoro, staring at the shadows shimmering under the light of the storm lantern Zoro had carried in with him. "It's hard. They are both so lovely, in their completely different ways. It's hard to have a feast in front of your eyes and not feel a little hungry. I know you've been frustrated too, the way you've been carrying on lately."

Zoro did not consider himself to have been 'carrying on'. The only one who 'carried on' aboard this damn boat was Sanji the love-cook, aka the damn thorn in Zoro's side. Yeah, maybe Zoro was frustrated at his inability to progress his fighting skills at the speed he wanted, as well as, in a lesser capacity, frustrated that he-...wanted something he didn't want to want with an annoying prick, but he was not 'carrying on' because of that. He-

Whoa.

"What. _Exactly_. Are you suggesting we scratch?"

Sanji levered a hip against the stanchion to move a few steps away from Zoro. He made it look casual but it was still self-preservation in its strictest form. Zoro felt a mild surge of grim satisfaction. 

"I'm just suggesting a trade-off. It's done on every pirate ship after a long stretch at sea without female company."

"We have two on board." Zoro wasn't arguing. He was just trying to clarify. "You'd never touch Nami, but what about Robin?"

Despite Sanji's behaviour, Nami was 'little sister' material to both of them. They'd been through too much together. But the new chick who'd recently come aboard...Nico Robin, trouble in distilled form as far as Zoro was concerned, who had the rest of the crew, particularly the love-chef, wrapped around her finger. The older woman's calm, clear eyes with the watchful darkness behind them would not blink at anything Sanji could possibly suggest. Zoro was no judge, but he thought she'd put out if she felt like it or had something to gain.

"What?! Never! What do you think I am? Do you think I'd insult such a woman by suggesting a- a bit of fast relief? And I could never _commit_ \- how could I devastate Nami-san like that? How could I _choose_?! Are you stupid?"

Zoro decided to avoid a kick to the head and maybe even get laid rather than answer that, but it was a very close call.

"Women should be courted, adored - all of them! Settling down with just one, which is what they'd expect for anything long term- More importantly, you don't get involved with nakama. That's a fast ticket to wrecked teamwork." Sanji appeared to be talking to himself and chewing his cigarette. It was obviously a conclusion he'd come to long before, and he was far from happy with it. "Now, the two of us, we're both guys, and unlike Luffy and Usopp we seem to have functioning libidos; we know what it's like, and we can relieve some of the pressure without risking the crew's integrity. It's not like you’d go all squirrelly on me and expect roses before and cuddling afterwards."

Zoro's sharp bark of laughter frightened one of the bilge rats and sent it scurrying under the forward cannon. Though, truth be told, the idea of Sanji waving flowers and making calf's eyes at him had been as alarming as it had been ludicrous.

The other man nodded. "Right. We're on the same page. That's the trade-off. You interested?"

"Yes."

Sanji looked startled for a brief second. He covered it by dropping his cigarette and grinding it out on the wooden planks. Then he glanced speculatively at the gun deck's door. That's when Zoro realized Sanji was suggesting they do this here and now. His heartbeat picked that up, here-and-now, here-and-now, _here_ -and- _now_ -

Zoro had sod-all experience with sex, though listening to Johnny and Yosaku when they were drunk was an experience onto itself. They'd lifted half the skirts in the East Blue, according to them. They'd also captured half the pirates on that ocean as well, and Zoro knew for a fact that was bullshit. 

Zoro had learned more than he'd wanted to know about tumbling a girl through hearsay. At one point, the pair of idiots had dragged young Zoro to a brothel to celebrate his seventeenth birthday and change hearsay into action. Zoro had passed right over the blousy hookers to concentrate on the pirate pinching one of them; the man had a price of 4 million Berries and a reputation as a deadly swordsman. The Madame had tossed the three of them out on their ears after Zoro had ruined her carpet with the bounty's blood and body parts, and that was the last time his partners had tried to take him out. 

Johnny and Yosaku also had a hoard of dirty jokes about how men did these things together. A lot of them involved cabin boys. With that in mind...

"Just what is it we are going to do, pervert cook?"

"Oi, who you calling a pervert?"

"The guy who's suggesting we have sex in the hold," Zoro answered, rather aptly considering the circumstances.

Sanji gave him an acid look, but held up one finger in a 'pay attention' gesture. "Handjob, blowjob, nothing more. I'm very serious about that. Nothing. More. You okay with that?"

After a few seconds, Sanji repeated, a lot more aggressively: "Hey, Zoro, I mean it. You hearing this?"

Everything Sanji had said after 'blowjob' had been an unreal succession of meaningless syllables. The harsh tone of the last question prompted Zoro to mutter "Fine," hoping he was agreeing to something he could live with. At this point, he didn't even care if it wasn't, he just wanted to get back to the blowjob part of the conversation. Everything else was a waste of time.

"Okay," Sanji said.

They stared at each other, unmoving, riding Merry's pitch and roll by body rote. A night breeze whispered in through the darkened cannon bay, making the storm lantern's light crackle and dance; wood creaked beneath oncoming waves.

Sanji stared at him hard, and then his lips twisted in a strange quirk Zoro couldn’t recall seeing before. "You've never had anyone go down on you. You look like a choir boy on his first trip to the cathouse."

"I've been to a brothel before." The words were automatic; Zoro's brain was still in arrested motion.

Sanji nodded sagely. "But you didn't pay to get your pipe cleaned, I take it."

"No," Zoro answered, a bit succinctly but with perfect honesty. The only thing he'd paid for were the damages.

Sanji tapped his chin with two fingers, as if he missed his cigarettes already, then his hand dropped to his tie and jerked it loose. "I'll start then."

Zoro's heart rate hit a high he normally only reached after some serious training. 

Sanji glanced around then tilted his chin at one of their boxes of supplies, a two feet high crate of spare rope. "Sit down over there. And take off the bloody belt."

Zoro gave the box a hard look. He was not a man subject to flights of fancy, but a part of him just couldn't believe this was happening and he was half expecting this to be some kind of really devious trick Sanji was playing and the box was hiding a bear trap. His body, which didn't have his misgivings, was already taking a few steps forward, his fingers jerking at the edges of his sash, gliding over the hard-on that was getting with the picture faster than he was.

Sanji had walked back to the door and was tinkering with the wooden frame around it. He drove a knife through the frame into the wood of the door's moulding to form a crude lock, since the only bar was on the other side. The way he'd blocked it wouldn't keep the door from opening, but it would make it stick until given a good shove, and give them some forewarning, though what exactly they'd do with it was another matter...It should be okay; the gun deck was the least used part of the ship, especially at this time of night, with most of the crew in the galley or already in their hammocks. Zoro recognized the knife Sanji used; something he'd seen a pirate hunter try to stick in the cook a few days ago, in some small-ass town at the backend of the Grand Line where the log pose had ditched them for a couple of days after they left Alabasta. Though Sanji might have kept the dagger for any purpose, it made Zoro wonder how long the man had been contemplating this trade-off.

Sanji wiped his hands on his slacks and walked towards where Zoro was sitting. Zoro tried his very best not to stiffen defensively, but he still couldn't quite let himself believe-

Sanji sank to his knees, hands on Zoro's thighs like he did this all the time and Zoro officially stopped thinking for good. 

He didn't need any prompting to lean back and edge his hips forward. Sanji undid the fly and peeled back the black cloth without any sign of hesitation. Zoro stared down at him. The storm lamp turned the cook's hair whiskey-amber; Zoro couldn't see more than bangs hanging loose brushing the tip of a nose. 

Then Sanji's head took up most of his vision, covering his lap. Zoro silently swore that he would kill anybody who woke him up from this dream if he just happened to be napping somewhere, even the bloody cook - especially the bloody cook. He was regulating his breathing automatically; a smidgeon of control over events. Then Sanji put his mouth around Zoro's boner and he lost even that.

Warm, wet, wiggly (tongue-) oh shit- sensations streamed through his mind. His hand was on Sanji's neck. He hadn't realized he'd moved. He could feel the muscles beneath his fingers stiffen and Sanji batted his hand away. 

Footsteps outside, heading down the forecastle stairs and to the hatch over the men's quarters. Zoro's eyes flickered to the door instinctively, but nobody came nearer than that.

Zoro caught a fleeting glance of blond hair, then the door, the dagger's hilt shining in the light, and then his eyes seem to nail themselves of their own volition to the opposite wall. His hands were threatening to leave wooden grooves in the box behind him. He could barely feel it though. He was sure his body was there, on that crate, but his nerves were getting swamped with this foreign and very intense input. 

It didn't really occur to him to wonder how Sanji had learned to do this, or if indeed Sanji had learned it at all, or was doing more than an average job that could easily be surpassed by any seaside strumpet. Lack of comparison. No...More than that...For Zoro, foremost was his ambition of becoming the best and then there was everything else. There was never any doubt which was the most important. But here was Sanji - the one person who'd somehow wormed his way under Zoro's skin - giving him head, and really, within the Everything Else category, it just didn't get much better than this.

Sanji made a cross sound - Zoro shuddered heavily on his box - and struck away the hand that had settled on his head.

Zoro was chewing the inside of his mouth, trying to be silent, he wasn't sure why. The pleasure seemed to be a writhing mass in his chest, trying to get out.

Sanji went a bit further, tongue teasing at the edge where foreskin pulled back, fingers - long fingers, strong, clever, fascinating and so fast as they chopped, sprinkled, kneaded, Zoro had tried not to watch them, but he always did in the end. Those fingers tracing lines on the skin below Sanji's mouth, curving down firmer, touching- 

Zoro tasted blood. His vision blurred with his heart beats, the pleasure was gripping his nervous system, using it, spinning it- like a sword flashing through his mind, steel-bright- ah!

-his lips parted and he came.

Sanji yelped and fell back, spitting. 

"Fuck! Ugh! 'coulda warned me!"

Zoro stared at him as the cook rubbed his mouth, then dragged a handkerchief from his shirt pocket - the only guy aboard who carried handkerchiefs - and wiped his hands. 

"...Sorry..."

Sanji's eyes flickered as high as Zoro's collarbone. "Hm. Yeah, well, give me a heads up next time, okay?"

...Next time?

Sanji looked around. His disgruntled look smoothed out when he saw the bottle Zoro had put down one eternity and a blowjob ago, and which was how he'd originally planned on spending his evening until it was his time for night watch. Sanji grabbed it, twisted off the cork and took two gulps, rinsed a third around his mouth.

"Sorry." The word was out before Zoro's brain could intervene and he regretted it immediately. Saying it once was already unusual enough for him. He felt stunned, his heart still knocking in his chest. He also felt good. Damned good. He now wished he hadn't gotten himself kicked out of that brothel three years ago, if this was how good it felt. 'Next time'. Oh, he really, really wanted Sanji to make good on that. It might even be worth that second apology.

Sanji looked calmer, though he still wasn't meeting Zoro's gaze. He waved a hand dismissively, swallowed some more gin and shrugged. "'S'okay, should have mentioned that. Didn't think. I guess some guys don't mind. I do."

He didn't say anything about how Zoro would know better 'next time', though. Damn.

Sanji put down the bottle, looked at his handkerchief with a grimace and tossed it out the cannon port. Then he met Zoro's gaze, finally a direct stare. "Not forgetting something, are we?"

Zoro shook his head numbly, though it took him a second to realize what Sanji was referring to. He stood up stiffly, closed his trousers as an afterthought, moved forward. 

"Looks like I finally found a way to shut you up." Sanji was recovering from the moment faster than Zoro was. It was irritating.

Switching their respective positions didn't take much time or thought. Zoro found himself crouched before Sanji, but not kneeling; too vulnerable a position. Sanji didn't comment, just leaned back a bit and flipped open his own buttons. His hands moved flawlessly, but his gestures looked tense. Tense and anticipatory. Sanji must have already gotten a blowjob at some point in his life, and now Zoro could understand how a guy could really miss those. 

A few of Johnny and Yosaku's less savoury jokes ran through his mind, but he shrugged them off. He shoved aside the parted trousers and boxers, and imitated Sanji's moves, more intent on just not getting it wrong, what with that 'next time' still unresolved. Having another man's dick in his mouth wasn’t anything he'd ever done before, but that didn't scare him; he'd yet to meet a thing that did. This shouldn't be hard, as long as he remembered to keep his grip very light and fingernails and teeth out of the equation. Just copy what Sanji had done. Mouth up and down, flick of tongue...

A part of Zoro that normally watched and learned from the outside world - mainly in combat - was now gearing up, not liking that previous small loss of face. He noted the way Sanji's hands stayed at his sides, making no attempt to touch Zoro. How the other's hips twitched and moved into the rough, amateur gestures. The small bitten sounds Sanji made, low in his throat...Zoro tried not to listen to those too closely, because they were achingly distracting...

He also noted it took a deal longer for Sanji to finish. He took really good note of that. Something to work on. 

Sanji gasped and prodded him in the shoulder. Zoro let the twitching flesh slip from his mouth, startled. Sanji pushed him away, face shut, his hand taking over, knees coming up. Zoro sat back on his heels, but he couldn’t see much, with the way Sanji had twisted. He just saw the cook tense and shudder, then slowly relax.

Zoro ran his tongue inside his mouth, chasing the musky taste curiously. Maybe he should have told Sanji to...go ahead...feh, he didn't know what the hell he was talking about. Though he was picking up a lot of education this evening in the hold. 

Sanji was breathing deeply and wiping his hand on the wood behind him. Zoro took that as permission to grab the bottle of booze Sanji had opened and join him on the long, low box of rope.

A silence dangled, unsure which way to break. Zoro passed the liquor over without looking and without having any himself, still curious about the taste in his mouth. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Sanji upend the bottle with a no-nonsense gesture. 

"That's the first time I've seen you drink like a man instead of sipping like you're afraid to swallow."

Sanji passed the gin his way. "When it's shit like this, I'll swill with the best of them. How can you drink this tar-thinner? Do you have any taste buds left?"

Just like that, the weird moment was over and the ribbing and grudging acceptance-cum-teamwork was back. Zoro chugged the gin, washing away some of the experience.

Sanji waited for the bottle back, wiped the top like the prissy pansy he was, and this time only took a small swallow. Always the lightweight when it came to liquor. Zoro thought of building this up into a competition, to make up for earlier, but didn't have the aggressive energy for it he usually had. 

Sanji wiped the bottle's top again, as if just making sure all the Zoro germs were off. Always doing things with his hands, especially when feeling his way through a situation; Sanji himself would look as cool as ice, but his hands moved, or else they were buried in his pockets. Zoro had wondered if this was one reason Sanji smoked, to give his fingers something to do. 

"So...I guess you're okay to trade-off from time to time? While we don't have any alternatives?" 

Zoro nodded. Good, that was 'next time' settled.

"Of course - I shouldn't have to say this, but with a dumbass like you, I'm not taking chances - of course it's understood that we don't mention this above deck, or talk about it even alone. We act just as before in all circumstances. Right?"

"Suits me."

"I'm sure it does. When you get an itch, just mention trading off something - watch duty, liquor, chores, whatever, and then if I have the time and say okay, we head here separately. And vice-versa, of course. Fortunately there's nobody aboard who would know any more about this than you did, so it'll be discreet enough. Just make sure it's during a time of day nobody's likely to need rope or gunpowder or anything."

Sanji was hogging the bottle. Zoro rectified the situation, thinking this all sounded very elaborate and rehearsed.

"Did you have this kind of trade-off with anyone on the Baratie?"

“Those apes?!” Sanji looked nauseous. “No way. Besides, there were plenty of ladies around to ply. Didn’t need it.” 

“That was your first time?” 

It was a logical deduction, but Sanji took it the wrong way for some reason. He stood up quickly and gave Zoro a dirty look. "No, but don’t get any fucking ideas."

"What ideas am I supposed to get?" And did they involve cabin boys? 

Sanji was lighting a cigarette with quick gestures, a scowl on his face. "This is just a trade-off, a palliative. I don't go for this normally. There was just a time on the Baratie a couple years back when ladies got a bit thin on the ground because of increased pirate activity. A bunch of buccaneers docked at the Baratie, and one of them actually knew how to shower. I was at the end of my rope by then, so was he; he told me how it worked and we did it. Just happened once, so don't get any ideas."

"Just once, and then Zeff kicked him off the Baratie?" 

Sanji stared at him, lighter still flickering between his fingers. "How...how did you- did that fucking old geezer _tell you_?!"

"Don't be stupid. I just guessed." Zeff wasn't only a restaurant proprietor, he was an ex-pirate captain, and a guy like that knew what happened on his ship. Even if he and Sanji could not give each other the time of day without a fight, the young man was, for all intents and purposes, Zeff's son. Zoro had figured that out two minutes after seeing Zeff kick Sanji through that table. A pirate who knew how to shower, teaching Zeff's seventeen-year-old 'baby eggplant' about trade-offs, wasn't going to impress old Red Shoes a great deal. If Zoro had to bet, he'd lay a golden doubloon against a wooden Berry that Zeff had sent the man out to swim with an anchor around his neck.

Sanji headed towards the door, feathers still ruffled, puffing that cigarette in a bad-tempered way. Zoro wished he'd get over it. He felt too good to have the cook spoil his mood.

Sanji snagged the knife, jerked it out of the wood and spun it absently in his fingers before sticking it in the back of his belt. His bad mood seemed to be passing fast enough. This mutual scratching thing between two of the crew's most antagonistic members could do a whole lot of good for the ship's morale. As First Mate, Zoro would have to see that this happened often.

"Give me a ten minute head start before coming out." Sanji was checking himself over, straightening his tie, rubbing at a spot on his shirt. 

Zoro grunted an assent and leaned back. There was a taller supply crate behind the box of ropes, like a backrest. A good place to catch a nap before night watch. 

"Hey." Sanji had his hand on the latch, looking back at him.

"Yeah?"

"We're okay, right? You're not going to go weird on me. This is just a deal, a trade-off."

Zoro looked at him, standing in the light of the storm lantern, gold shining in the man's hair, and he knew that for his own part, it wasn't just a trade-off. Nobody got under his guard like this moron. It wasn't just a matter of a boner, or he'd have had it for other guys before, and it wasn't purely rivalry, or he'd feel the same towards Luffy, who had a much better chance of punching Zoro's ticket than Sanji ever had. 

But, bottom line, whatever Sanji was - pain in the ass, emotional pitfall, fuck buddy, whatever - he was like a little paper boat floating down a current, and Mihawk was the white waters and the massive waterfall up ahead. That assessment must have been plainly readable on Zoro's face, because Sanji shook his head, muttered "Stupid question" and swung open the door. 

He heard Sanji's footsteps heading towards the forecastle. The cook hailed someone; a distant voice from the crow's nest answered. 

Zoro grabbed the bottle and swigged, then settled down more comfortably, head tilted back against the supply crate and eyes on the ceiling. This had been an unusual evening. He took another swallow of gin, the taste punch-drunk solid on his tongue...and wondered if he was going to get his feelings hurt somewhere down the line. It seemed unlikely. He just didn't feel that emotionally into this. Yet. But Sanji wasn't engaging any emotions at all; Zoro might know fuck-all about relationships, but he could still see how a difference like that could spell trouble at some point.

The prospect didn't really worry him. A little emotional pain would have no impact whatsoever on Zoro's greater purpose. In fact, it might be for the best; go to the end of this madness, get it out of his system, and if, by some highly unlikely turn of events, Sanji managed to break his heart, then he'd have one less thing to carry with him when he met his final challenge. 

Zoro grinned into the darkness at the edge of the circle of light. Even if it stayed at the level of an occasional screw and nothing more...he was feeling a hell of a lot more relaxed. Nothing like getting that itch scratched, Sanji had been right about that. As he closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep, he just knew he was already looking forward to next time. Damn the rest.


	2. Kawagane

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Kawagane_ \- the hard outer layer of folded steel that gives the blade its strength

According to an old map Nami had found in a treasure chest a few stops back, the place was called Coney Island; weird name, but appropriate for an expanse of hillocks crawling with rabbits. The sheer number of the beasts was astounding. Zoro couldn't believe they found enough to eat. A sure-fire sign there were no predators bigger than a rat around. 

Sanji had drawn level with Zoro, giving their stopover an assessing glance: ten square miles of heather, nibbled grass and rabbit holes, with ravines and steep bluffs off to the north and a gravel beach behind the disembarked crew. He took the cigarette out of his mouth and looked around at the landscape crawling with rabbits. "We could always use more meat, the way Luffy raids my stores." 

"Bet I can bag more than you do," Zoro said, because one-upping the cook should always be a priority, even if it was in something as lame as rabbit hunting. 

"You're on. Do we-"

"Look! The bunnies here are so tame. Isn't he cute?"

"Wow, Chopper, that's amazing. Will he let me handle him, if you ask him?" 

"Me too! Give him to me next, Usopp!"

"Don't shout, Luffy, you'll scare him off."

Zoro and Sanji shared a resigned glance. Rabbit hunting was out. Some things couldn't be fought no matter how strong you were.

The crew scattered. Luffy and his two fellow comedians went off, ostensibly to fill the water barrels, probably just to explore. Robin took a circular route along the beach to look for some kind of clue as to how long the log pose would take to set; finding traces of old encampments, for instance, would not be a good sign. Nami stayed on watch aboard the Merry, and Sanji wandered off, which Zoro noted only in passing was somewhat unusual. 

It was still early afternoon, so Zoro turned back towards their ship, anchored off a gravel incline nearby. Training on dry land would be a nice change of pace. He collected his weights and hunted around for a patch that wasn't too full of rabbit holes. 

He didn't expect to be disturbed. Even the rabbits had stopped staring and gone about their business, whatever that might be. But Sanji didn't say anything, just sat down on a hummock, cigarette dangling from his lips, and watched Zoro warm up. Zoro ignored him.

After ten minutes of hammering through one-armed presses, Zoro stood up and felt a brief sway, as if the island was rising and falling beneath his feet; his sailor's legs hadn't worn off yet. He could blame the pitch of bad weather they'd sailed through yesterday, but whatever the reason, his body was getting too used to the ship's movements, losing a fraction of its edge ashore. A flaw. There was no saying the rematch against Mihawk would take place on the ocean. It could happen on dry land - in a city street, a dojo, a marsh, a burning desert; in the halls of kings or in solitary confinement; today, tomorrow, in years; the only thing certain was that it would happen. 

While Zoro contemplated ways of training himself to immediately adapt to any conditions, Sanji stubbed out his smoke in a clump of loose dirt, rubbed his right leg and stood up. He moved slowly and at a tangent across the dip, watching Zoro out of the corner of his eye. 

There it was again. A low-boiling feel of restless energy. Zoro had been picking it up from the cook since yesterday. He'd expected Sanji to corner him last night and suggest a trade-off, but it hadn't happened. Which was weird, because the cook looked like a guy who could use it. They'd not had any opportunity on Skypiea to indulge in what had become a regular thing before that trip up into the clouds. The truth was, Zoro could sure use it as well, but it wasn't his turn to ask.

That had been an almighty flaw in Sanji's careful little scheme after their first time two months back. The problem with one of them asking for a trade-off and the other accepting if he had the time was...well, it involved one of them _asking_ for it, and neither of them was really any good at asking for favours from the other. To put it very mildly. The second time damn near didn't happen as a result. Then Zoro told himself that Sanji had taken the first step, and one hell of a step it had been; he'd be a rat to let the cook beg for it again, so he'd gone for it. Then the next time Sanji had asked, and then back to Zoro again. 

Of course, that just moved their competitive spirit to another arena. Zoro went from total novice in giving head to figuring out just how useful his unique brand of swordsmanship could prove to be in this area. The dazed look on Sanji's face that second time had been a victory in itself. The cook picked up the challenge, and the counterpart just kept getting better and better.

But there was one thing that wasn't done, in this unspoken deal they shared. Zoro didn't ask for a trade-off while Sanji was cooking, Sanji didn't ask while Zoro was training.

"Are you going to stay here staring at me all day?" Zoro gave his shoulder a stretch. "I'm going to be at this for at least three more hours."

From the way Sanji suddenly blinked and focused, he'd been looking straight through Zoro. The condescending drawl sounded automatic. "Yeah, yeah, I know how seriously you take your masochism." 

Zoro stretched the other shoulder and went to pick up his weights, nudging a rabbit away with his foot. The critters on this island were sluggish, too dumb and used to the absence of predators to scare even when shooed away. 

"Maybe I should give you a workout. Since you're so desperate for pain," Sanji said.

Zoro straightened with a weighted iron bar dangling from his hand. "Workout? What are you blathering about, cook?"

"We have unfinished business." Sanji rubbed the corner of his bottom lip with his thumb, and there was an odd light in his eyes.

When Zoro looked at him blankly - and impatiently, wrist already flexing under the weight of the iron bar - Sanji bit out, "The Davy Back ball match, remember?"

"What about it? It was two days ago. I scored the goal, you managed to not get in my way too much, we won, it's over."

In the prickly silence that followed, Zoro realized what unresolved business the jackass was referring to and what he was suggesting. The sudden surge of anticipation easily matched what he'd felt when Sanji had first mentioned blowjobs. This was new. Sanji was quick enough for a half-serious shoving match over food or some imagined slight towards the girls, but he'd never suggested they actually make a proper fight of it before.

"You sure, crap-cook? There won't be your Nami-swaaan around to break it up this time."

Sanji loosened his tie with a couple of jerks. Good answer. Zoro dropped the weighted bar with a thud. "I hope you know what you're doing, dumbass."

"Your solicitude is touching. Really." Sanji unbuttoned the top two buttons on his collar and glanced to one side, where Wado, Kitetsu and Yubashiri were lying on the weight gear's tarp. "Get your swords. You're useless without them."

"I think we proved I wasn't during that Groggy match." Zoro moved across the shallow dip of ground with a crack of knuckles as he warmed up his fists.

Sanji glanced down at his feet. "I'm still armed." 

"Feh. You need to be."

"Screw you," Sanji said pleasantly and attacked.

Zoro dodged that first probing kick to the chest. He swung his arm up, trying to catch Sanji's leg and overbalance him. Sanji spun out of reach, crouched down into the spin, leg coming around low to swipe Zoro's feet out from under him. Zoro fell back a step, but hell, no more than that, and then he was on the attack again. 

...Two months ago, and despite their best intentions, things had changed after that first time in the gun deck. Their rivalry had hit a bit of a low key, down to a few occasional lashes of light sarcasm and squabbles, more for fun than anything else...

Sanji threw another girly kick. And he'd been the one to start this, too, the bastard. Zoro didn't bother dodging. He caught Sanji's foot against his crossed wrists, smiled grimly and whipped his arms apart with the sort of speed and strength with which he'd cut air to ribbons when his hands gripped blades. Sanji yelped, propelled straight back at high speed. He managed to twist in mid-air - he had the spine of a bloody cat - and tumble back into a half-kneeling position a good fifteen feet away. 

Zoro put a hand to his neck and cracked his vertebra. "Take this seriously, dartboard-brow."

Sanji picked himself up, a faintly bored expression slipping over diamond-hard intent. Zoro recognized that look; some of the cook's defeated enemies would have recognized it too. It made dark and twisted anticipation writhe sensuously in the swordsman's gut.

...In fact, ever since their first visit to the gun deck, Zoro and Sanji had been getting along pretty well, as well as could be expected of them. Even their nakama had noticed. And then there'd been the excitement of going to Skypiea. The whole thing seemed like a dream, now they were back on the blue sea, but one memory stayed so clear that Zoro could close his eyes at night and touch it. The bonfire burning; his crew, his friends, behaving like the magnificent lunatics they were; Sanji and the others dancing with the sky-wolves and the fire. Emotions running wild and crazy, as they did when men could laugh at the knowledge they might be dead next time the sun sets... 

Sanji dusted off a few pieces of heather from his clothes; composed, a far cry from the yappy idiot he could be sometimes. Then he walked forward. No momentum. Zoro watched him carefully. That casual advance was setting off all his alarms, but he wasn't sure where the attack was going to come from. 

His instincts were telling him to back off and let Sanji come at him, but that slow tread forward was a deliberate taunt. Zoro should be able to take whatever the cook could dish out, and if not, the pain would be incentive to train a hell of a lot harder for next time. He took three long steps forward, fists swinging, eyes on Sanji's legs-

Sanji just stood there with Zoro's fist coming _right at his face_ \- and then he was gone. Backflip!

Zoro knew what was coming, but that didn't make it any easier to evade. He didn't even have the time to roundly curse himself as Sanji's long legs came up at the tail-end of the flip and hammered him in the chest. At least he'd managed to jerk his head back or he'd have taken Sanji's foot under the chin and that would have been light's out. Zoro staggered back- Sanji righted himself from his flip by falling into a semi-crouch, launching fluidly right into a new attack while Zoro was still staggering back like a drunk on his last bottle.

... Then a few days after they'd left Skypiea, there'd been the Davy Back Groggy Match and suddenly they forgot to be nice. The very lethality of their teamwork against their opponents had brought the old rivalry erupting like a firestorm and Zoro had _liked it_.

If Zoro had had his swords, Sanji would have been mincemeat. But bare-handed....A sideways kick aimed to slam him midriff. Zoro blocked it with his knee. He could feel his joints compact from ankle to hip, trying to absorb the shock. Damn, that cook could kick like a mule, no denying it. Zoro hadn't had time to brace sufficiently, it sent him reeling again. Sanji's foot jabbed at his ankle, Sanji's knee cut at his thigh- Sanji spun around and hammered him in the ribs and Zoro let himself fall and roll, trying to get some distance. 

The asshole actually let him stand up, just to make sure Zoro realized Sanji wasn't exactly putting all his deadly potential into this. 

On the next pass, Zoro managed to close in and get a few punches off. Sanji had to fall back, a hand reaching to an impact point on his ribs. Zoro instinctively stepped forward to press the advantage- 

His next blow hit air. 

A shadow against the sun- his right arm shot upward to parry, but Sanji's well-timed leap and scything downward kick still drove him to his knees. Son of a- 

And then the rest of Sanij landed on top of him.

The clockwork cooperation that had sent the Groggy Brothers out of the match had been a temporary alliance of the strong, a thing of convenience; it had lasted until one minute after the match. And Zoro realized, this - this right here was what he wanted. The trade-off was good, but this was what he _wanted_. To dig into the cook, to rib him, open him up, see what was inside, touch it, _touch it_ -

Sanji's breath was a harsh rasp. His left foot held Zoro's shoulder pinioned down at the joint, blocking the arm; he was kneeling with his right knee against Zoro's solar plexus, some pressure on the nerve bundle and a silent threat of a hell of a lot more. Only someone as freakishly flexible in the hips as Sanji could pull off that kind of hold effectively and still lean down to grab Zoro's collar with those fine and fiddly cook hands of his.

Sanji's mask of boredom was ragged at the edges, lips parted around quick breaths and a hard smirk. "This serious enough for you, dickhead?"

Zoro absently tallied his bruises. Not too shabby, for a warm-up. Now he was going to toss this cook off like one of his bloody 'crepes', get up and even the score. Getting out of this hold would give him a few more lumps, undoubtedly, but pain was a good learning tool. Sanji would not get another hit like that in for awhile. Time to start taking this seriously too, since Sanji had been nice enough to oblige.

And instead- his left hand grabbed Sanji by the back of the neck and hauled him forward. Sanji yelped and his left foot slipped off rather than dislocate Zoro's shoulder, which was nice, and then Zoro crushed their lips together.

His right arm now free, Zoro used it to bring Sanji closer, pulling at his shoulder. He tilted his head, bruising their mouths.

They'd brought each other off a handful of times, but they'd never done this before.

Sanji's muffled protest quivered on Zoro's lips. The mouth against his moved with the garbled words, then softened...

Three seconds later, the pressure on his solar plexus exploded. 

Zoro flinched and fought for breath. He was helpless as Sanji stood up, spun around and let fly right in his ribs. The kick was a solid blow that sent him crashing into a nearby heathery bluff.

"You-...."

Zoro blinked the world back into focus, his hand rubbing his bruised side. Sanji was staring at him with the same look on his face he'd had when Zoro came in his mouth the first time.

"You-...what's the fucking idea?!"

Zoro concentrated on getting his breathing right again, though he was suddenly wondering what _had_ been the idea. He hadn't planned on that, hadn't even known what he was going to do until Sanji's mouth was plastered against his own. 

"You bloody moron! They could have seen us!" Sanji turned to stare at the ship three hundred yards away.

"There's only Nami left aboard-"

"Only Nami?!" The few rabbits who hadn't already fled from the battle scene belted away at Sanji's screech. 

"-and she's on the other side of the forecastle, out of the full sun, working on her maps." At least that's where she'd been when he'd fetched his weights, and where she'd hopefully remained. Otherwise Nami had gotten an unexpectedly good show and Zoro was dead meat.

Sanji was staring at the ship. He finally rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand and gave Zoro a dirty look. "Don't do that again."

Zoro shrugged to show he didn't care either way, but he couldn't help adding: "You have your mouth around my dick on a regular basis-"

"That's not the same thing, and I should have realized you were too stupid to tell the difference." Looked like Sanji was going for glacial resentment. Zoro would have preferred a shouting match. "The trade-off is one thing, but I only kiss girls. Got it?"

Zoro didn't get it, but it wouldn't be the first time he couldn't follow the cook's twisted little logic. Zoro, a straight thinker if there ever was one, couldn't be bothered to try. 

"Fine. No kissing." It wasn't that big a deal, and not worth putting the blowjob privileges at risk.

Sanji stalked off towards the Merry. Zoro leaned back comfortably against the bluff into which he'd been kicked and watched him go, then let his fingers brush his lips curiously. He'd probably been a bit rough. Bet a girl kissed a lot softer. Feh, not that it mattered. If the cook didn't want to kiss, they could do something better with their mouths instead. Fingertips still touching his lower lip, Zoro's eyes slid shut in the sun, on the grass smelling of honeysuckle and rabbit doo. Damn rabbits...though they seemed to have all disappeared for now. Good.

The peace and buzzing of insects suggested a nap. Just a quick one, before he went back to the training the bloody cook had interrupted. That fight had barely counted as a warm-up. What had that been about anyway...? 'Davy Back match' my ass, Zoro thought, absently licking his lips. Then he dismissed it. Instinct told him he'd find out soon enough.

A sense of movement off to his left kept him from giving in fully to sleep. He cracked an eye open and saw Robin a few hills away, walking really fast towards the ship, head moving as if looking for something.

Zoro opened both eyes. It was unusual to see Robin in a hurry.

Robin spotted him. Her course veered towards him sharply and she broke into a jog.

Zoro rolled to his feet and went to pick up his swords.

His nakama spoke as soon as she was in earshot. "Swordsman-san, do you know where the others are?" 

"Nami's on the ship. Chopper and Usopp are with Luffy. Sanji is off sulking somewhere, hopefully on the ship with Nami." As chance would have it, that roughly paired up the stronger and weaker of the Straw Hats, though as far as Zoro was concerned, his crew didn't really have any of the latter. All his nakama had shown they could come through in a pinch, and had done so time and again. If he'd tried sailing these seas with Johnny and Yosaku, he'd have buried them both ages ago.

"Where did Captain-san and the others go?"

Zoro pointed in the direction he pertinently knew was the right one- then realized he was directing Robin's bemused attention back at their ship, so he did a one-eighty and gestured at the hills. "They went that way, I think. To pet some more rabbits."

"Oh dear."

Zoro made sure his swords were clear for fast draw. "What's up?"

That's when he realized that the thing in Robin's hand wasn't a piece of bleached driftwood as he'd first assumed, but a human femur. 

Robin nodded at Zoro's sharp glance. "There are quite a lot of them. Several decades' worth. I imagine there's not much information about this island for a very good reason."

"I didn't think there was anybody in this godforsaken hole."

"No human did this." Robin held up the bone and tapped a section of it. "The remains I found were shattered and gnawed, dragged and stored underground."

"How can there be any big predators around with so many bloody rabbits?"

"Rabbits may be the problem. From the position and location of the remains, and the size of the indentures, I think the rabbits on this island have survived by developing rather unusual patterns of-"

A mean streak of grey launched itself at Zoro's leg. He batted it along with Yubashiri's scabbard without looking away from Robin. "Unusual patterns of what?"

There was a holler somewhere off in the hills. Zoro rolled his eyes. 

In the distance were three running figures. Behind them was an undulating fauve blanket of vicious fur. Zoro had once seen a school of piranhas attack an unlucky bandit he'd been hunting overland. It was the same kind of rushing, converging, pulsating mob, with individual bunnies leaping out of the pack to hurl themselves onto their victims and then fall back into the seething mass when they were brushed aside. Luffy was in the rear, batting them away, but not doing more damage than that, oddly enough. 

"Unusual patterns of swarming," said Nico Robin. "And the ability to eat meat. I imagine the rabbits were stranded here from another island a long time ago, and flourished in the absence of predators. When the population pressure rose, instead of dying out, they evolved the ability to raise large colonies of practically dormant individuals that could suddenly swarm with something like a hive-mind when enough food is present to-"

"Robin."

"Yes, let's go help them."

"I'll do that." Things had changed on Skypiea. Sure, it was obvious Robin had some kind of weird connection to a Supreme Admiral of the Navy, no less, and the watchful darkness still stared out at him from those quiet eyes, but she'd protected the crew, stood next to Zoro and told Eneru to shove it in the best of ways, and that, as far as Roronoa Zoro was concerned, made her nakama. She was also terrifically smart, knew her limits and how to apply her strengths. In short, he trusted her now with some pretty important things. "I'd rather you go to the ship. If they can swim-"

"I'll help Navigator-san keep the ship safe."

"Get Nami to haul anchor and be ready for a quick getaway." Zoro was already walking on an intercept with the rampaging horde and his friends. 

Robin took a couple of steps after him, speaking quickly. "And if Cook-san is not on the ship?"

"That idiot can take care of himself, and the best way to get him back on the Merry pronto is to have you and Nami on it. As soon as you have Luffy and Chopper on board - and Usopp too - cast off a little ways. Don't wait for me or Sanji. Unlike you devil fruit users, we can swim."

He started to run towards the incoming wave. Fortunately, one of his friends was using his head and had directed their flight down into a deep sharp dip in the hills. They disappeared from Zoro's sight as he made his way towards the top of it. Then a pair of rubber hands slapped at the top of the steep bluff, and Luffy, with his crewmates clinging to him, came catapulting up into the air. The rabbit wave couldn't make the climb, and were forced to double back and swarm up the gentler inclines.

Luffy ran right past Zoro, his voice dopplering around the words "The bunnies are aaangryyyy!"

"No shit," Zoro muttered, drawing a second sword, more for breadth of swing than for any need.

Luffy's bouncy shortcut had bought them time, but if they all retreated, the rabbits would follow them and swim to the Merry. It'd be harder to beat them all off from there. Zoro for one would not be able to unleash his full potential without damaging their much-battered ship. It would be better to make a stand on the island, he decided, and not let any 'bunny' set foot on the Going Merry. Besides...it was an old sailor's superstition that rabbits aboard brought bad luck. That probably went double for rampaging carnivorous ones. 

Zoro planted himself between his friends and the crazed animals, lifted his swords as the first wave jumped him, and said: "You guys should have stuck to carrots." 

It took half a minute for the bunny nation to realize that jumping Roronoa Zoro was a really stupid idea. Thirty long seconds which were far from fun for the pirate. The situation wasn't totally without danger, but it was a threat of numbers, not skill. The bloody rodents got a lot nearer to him than he'd have wanted to allow, because even as he cut down whole swathes, dozens at a time with sheer air pressure, the individuals not scythed by the blows managed to jump him. They rolled beneath his feet, threatening to trip him; they latched onto his clothes, swarmed up his legs like rats. Well, he couldn't kick as well as the cook, but he could manage. More rabbits went tumbling. Others jumped his back and got sliced as the blades blurred into a wall of steel.

Survival instinct finally kicked in, and Zoro was at the center of a widening ring. 

He stared at the beady eyes. The rabbits stared back. Zoro grinned. The rabbits gave him a few more inches of space.

He turned and walked towards the beach. The swarm rustled at his back but didn't attack. As he headed towards the shore, they parted before him warily. Zoro, swords still gripped in his hands, walked on. 

Up ahead, the Merry's sail was unfurling, and he could see Usopp pushing away with an oar. The latter made huge 'Hurry up!' gestures at Zoro. Zoro slid Kitetsu back into its scabbard, splashed into the water on an intercept, ran until he was thigh-deep, took a good push against the shale beneath his feet and leapt, catching one of the rope ladders along its side with one hand as the ship sailed by. He glanced back, but either the critters couldn't swim, or else they'd decided that this meal was too tough. Zoro smirked. It had been small game, but after that abortive fight with Sanji, it had been a bit of exercise. 

The Merry was gliding over darker waters now. Zoro slid Yubashiri back into place and climbed the ladder. Just as he was about to reach for the railing, a foot landed near the knots, and a blond head was silhouetted against the sky. 

"...Zoro?" Sanji sounded like he didn't quite believe it. 

Zoro put his arms over the gunwale. "Don't tell me you thought that lot could do more than give me a bad case of static cling."

"...Huh?" Sanji was still staring at him, his nose twisted in a funny way.

"Just get out of my way, cook." Zoro climbed the last rungs, swung a leg over the railing-

Sanji made a 'tsk' noise. His boot to the shoulder caught Zoro at the worst possible moment when it came to balance and sent him flailing down to the water again with an almighty splash.

He broke surface already shouting "What the hell?!"

Sanji was leaning way over the railing with a wickedly amused look on his face. "You mean, you really didn't notice you're covered in rabbit blood and guts from head to toe?"

Zoro blinked up at him, then checked what he could see of himself. His white shirt was now a dashing washed-out red that verged on pink in places, and he was at the center of a bloody circle, quickly broken and washed away by waves. He cursed and swam after the ship, water breaking over his head. Through his splashes, he could hear Sanji shout at someone to drop anchor again, they had to pick some marimo from the seabed. Bastard.

"I think the critters have decided we're too tough to eat," Sanji said, raising his voice to be heard over the clank and rattle of the anchor chain releasing. "Rinse off before you come aboard; if you get blood everywhere, Usopp will have a fit. Chopper and Luffy too. They still can't wrap their heads around the evil bunny concept."

Grumbling incoherently, Zoro swished water over his hair and shoulders and rubbed his face. It did feel pretty sticky now that he thought of it. Sea water stung in minor scratches and nibbles.

He dragged himself out of the water and up the ladder, clothes waterlogged, to find a hand in front of his face.

Sanji's grin was lazy. "I guess I'll apologize for the forced bath. Though you really needed it."

If Zoro wasn't stuck halfway up a rope ladder, he'd have shrugged. He didn't take the hand, but he didn't shake it off when it steadied him at the elbow as he made his way over the railing. He didn't need it, but the gesture was there.

Sanji glanced back at the island as he lit a cigarette. "Rabbits. I'm starting to develop an intense dislike of rabbits. I thought the Rapan on Drum Island were the worst, but I stand corrected. These blighters must be related, too, because I swear, I might have been raised on a ship, but I'm damn sure rabbits are supposed to eat grass back in East Blue. The only good rabbit is in a pot. Talking of which, you couldn't have brought a few dead ones back with you, could you?"

"Feel free to go and pick up the ones I killed." Zoro took off his shirt and wrung it out. "I'm sure there's plenty of those."

"No there isn't." Sanji had wandered back to the gunwale, and he sounded a bit subdued. "They appear to be eating their dead."

"...When are we leaving?"

"Ah, there we have a problem. The-"

"-bloody log pose." Zoro resisted the urge to beat his head against the wooden railing.

"Hm-hm."

They stood side by side and looked back at the island. There was a ring of rabbits on the shore, every beady eye fixed on the ship; they appeared to be waiting. The others were swarming around the chopped up spots Zoro had left. There were a lot of them, and the Straw Hats were going to have to clear them out or find some way of getting the log pose back on shore long enough to record the magnetic signature of this blasted Coney Island, and who knew how long that would take. 

Sanji turned towards Zoro and smirked savagely. "Looks like that bet's on again. The one who bags the most of these critters wins." 

"You're on." It'd be an opportunity to go back and get the weights he'd left onshore. "If Luffy lets us, that is. He didn't take a single swing when he was running away earlier."

"He won't have a choice if we want to get the log pose set. Don't worry, all we need to do is point out that they're not friendly, and then remind him that they're food, and he'll be joining us on the bet."

"Yeah, probably beat us both if there's meat on the line."

Sanji hopped up onto the railing, curling up those long limbs of his until he was sitting cross-legged, looking like he was comfortably settled on a bench instead of balancing on a ten-inch strip of wood. One hand kneaded his right thigh. "After we're done rabbit hunting, I'm going to kick your ass."

"You'll try to, you mean," Zoro said mechanically, scrutinizing the cook's profile. The sudden statement had caught him off-guard; with the way Sanji had been smiling, and their usual banter and one-upmanship back in place, Zoro had thought they were good again. Sanji didn't even seem all that angry..."You still mad about that kiss? You took a swing at me already, and I let you have your shot. Get over it." 

Sanji blinked, then shook his head, irritated. "No, not because of that. Though if you do that again, I'll punt you back to Skypiea, got it?"

"Try to." 

"I just want to have another match," Sanji said. He didn't notice the second correction any more than the first. Which made him considerably more distracted than Zoro had first thought. 

Zoro glanced around. Nami was bossing Usopp and Luffy around, getting the sail back up, and Robin was consoling Chopper by the looks of it, ushering him into the galley. "This isn't about the Groggy match. What the hell's up with you? You're not the one to go picking fights, usually."

He couldn't see Sanji's face from that side, just a fall of blonde bangs, the mouth set in hard lines twisted downwards, the body language unforthcoming and the hand still rubbing his right thigh. Zoro focused on the gesture; now that he thought of it, he'd seen the cook do that several times in the last two days.

"Is that still bugging you? You should get Chopper to see to it."

Sanji removed his hand abruptly and fished for the cigarettes in his pocket. "Did you get him to look at your arm?"

"My arm's fine."

"Liar." Sanji finally turned to look at him, eyes scathing. "I watched you practice earlier. You did twice as many press-ups using the right arm. You normally train both sides equally. The only reason you'd do so many reps is because you're in pain and trying to prove you're not, or something equally moronic."

Zoro reached for the band of mottled skin on his upper right bicep where that son of a bitch Aokiji had frozen him, a matching patch to the one Sanji had on his leg; the Marine had hit them both where it affected them the most, and he'd only seen them fight for all of one second..."It doesn't hurt, it's just stiff. If I get the blood flowing through it, it will heal the damage faster. So that's what this is about? Aokiji?"

For a moment he thought Sanji wouldn't answer. The cook flicked his lighter, the warm glow fighting the blaze of sunshine in his hair, and he spoke around the stick so quietly that the crying of gulls overhead nearly covered it. "He almost took them away from us...Robin and Luffy..."

"Yes."

"He beat us."

"No he didn't. Luffy ordered us back-"

"He would have beaten us."

"Maybe," Zoro said, which was as far as he was willing to concede. When it came down to that last line between life and death, there was no saying how things would go until one man walked away and the other did not. "He did take Luffy out, which puts him in the 'beyond tough' category. But we didn't know what we were facing. Now we do." Zoro had already swallowed Aokiji's bitter pill, and washed it down with plans for a rematch. He'd train harder, and next time, Mr Navy Supreme Admiral was going down.

"Yeah...But the motherless bastard has an elemental devil's fruit...You saw how he got up after Robin-chan decked him? Pulled himself together..." Sanji's voice had gone thoughtful; he was staring blindly at Coney Island. "He'll be hard to deal with."

"We'll just keep smashing him until he doesn't get up anymore." Zoro shook out his shirt and slipped it on to dry in the sun. He left off the haramaki until he could clean it. He'd have to take care of the blades and scabbards, too, before bloodstains set in.

"It'd be smarter to find his weakness." Sanji's smile was bloodthirsty around his cigarette and there was a gleam in his eyes as he looked up at Zoro, a look the others usually didn't see in the urbane cook. "The way I see it, fire is what's needed for ice. As a chef, if I can't master fire, nobody can. I have this idea...I want to develop it, and kicking your ass is a good way of doing that. I can cut loose on you."

Zoro found himself returning the smile. "Any time, cook. Beats me why you didn't just ask me outright earlier. I'd have obliged."

He could see a flicker of eye through the fall of bangs. "Hm. I'm sure you would, but I didn't want it to go to your head. There's only so much room left over after all the interest in fighting is stored away."

Translated: Yeah, I'm sorry, I just didn't know how to ask you for the favour. Neither of them was any good at that, after all, especially when it came to something important; Zoro, because anything that looked like a need, a flaw, could be seen as a threat to his greater all-consuming purpose; Sanji, because he couldn't afford to be unable to protect what he'd set his mind to protect, whether it be a restaurant, his nakama or a pretty face he just happened to run across. Dumbass. 

Zoro put his hands behind his head and sneered. "Fine, don't ask, then. Just come at me like you mean it next time and you'll be doing both of us a favour instead of wasting our time."

Sanji grinned, a genuinely warm one as he did his own translation. His fingers dug into his thigh again, unnoticed as he made plans to include Zoro into training for a battle which should be outside the realm of his job description, if he were on any other ship or any other kind of cook... Zoro couldn't put it into words, and he didn't really care to try to, but this- this right here was one of the reasons why Sanji kept wiggling deeper under his skin.

"It'll have to wait until we can get away from this hole," Zoro said, wishing that wasn't the case. He wanted this now. From the tautness of Sanji's shoulders, so did he. 

Ah, but tension was something they could deal with immediately. In theory it was Sanji's turn to ask, but suddenly Zoro couldn't care less about their little games. They seemed irrelevant. 

"Want to trade off?"

Sanji stared blindly at the island, and then glanced up at the sun. He took a long drag on his cigarette, stubbed it out against the sole of his shoe and swung off the railing. "Meet you in the gun deck in an hour."

"An hour?"

"I have to set something to marinate for dinner. Plus, you still reek of rabbit. Take a proper shower first and wash out your clothes." 

Zoro smirked as he headed off towards the bathroom. "Picky, picky..." 

...It probably wasn't normal. No, looking forward to a fight as much as to sex was almost definitely not normal. Zoro had never really bothered with normal, so he was okay with that. He looked forward to both. To having that body writhing beneath his mouth and to have it flicker out of reach and retaliate with a kick like a house falling on his head. The former was a no-brainer, the latter...it felt real. It was like the true part of Sanji touching the true part of himself...Building something, strength to strength. Zoro's fingers curled around Wado's hilt.

And he was looking forward to kissing the cook again, when he could manage it. Not because he particularly wanted to, though he was curious about the sensation and willing to see if he could improve; but mainly because Sanji had imprudently mentioned kicking Zoro's ass over it if he tried that one more time. He'd just have to make sure the others didn't catch them at it. It'd make things too complicated, and he liked them the way they were.

Thinking of all the prime quality training he was going to get, Zoro nodded in satisfaction and grabbed a bucket and some soap. 

The log pose only took a few more unpleasant hours to set, and then they were off. Zoro hoped Sanji would show him what he'd thought of the next day, but that was when they arrived at Water 7, and the crew was framed for murder less than twenty-four hours later, a record even for the Straw Hats. Zoro would get to see Sanji's ideas on using fire put into practice directly instead, on Enies Lobby. Out of the corner of his eye he saw Sanji put down the big Zoan with that blow, and felt, for the briefest moment, almost jealous...


	3. Shingane

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Shingane_ \- the softer core around which the _Kawagane_ is wrapped, giving the weapon its flexibility

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> That long 'rrrriiiip' noise you just heard was the manga storyline going one way and me the other. This is where the fic's timeline caught and passed the One Piece chapter published at the time of the story's creation. So details of the Sunny are wrong despite retrofitting as many as I could - Oda-sensei is nuts, which is why we all love him. Also, Franky and all the following do not come aboard in this fic.

Zoro reached up and touched a beam in the galley. Adam was a dark wood, like oak weathered to grey, the color of wet slate. Zoro touched it with the pads of his fingertips and _felt_ it with his knowledge of the breath of things, of the way into each object. "...Damn, this stuff is solid..."

"That's good to know," came a mutter from the kitchen area.

Zoro hadn't meant to be overheard. He continued on to the bottle rack, pretending he hadn't said anything, especially in that faintly awed tone. Sanji didn't comment further. 

Nami turned away from the porthole. She was smiling confidently. Zoro had seen her put the expression together in the window's reflection before he'd gone to fetch the brandy. 

"How's the cooking area, Sanji-kun? Everything where you need it?"

"Yes, my goddess!" Sanji caroled. Zoro thought the tone sounded a bit mechanical, like a Sanji-reflex.

The door burst open, letting in a gust of wet wind. "The anchor's down and the sails are furled! Is it time to eat yet?!"

"Soon, Luffy. Sit down, I'm serving coffee. It's cold out there." The sea had risen and the temperature tumbled an hour after leaving Water 7's climate zone.

Zoro took his accustomed seat at the table. Strange to think of it as his accustomed seat when this was a brand new table, a brand new galley, a brand new ship, and a brand new orientation to the room. But somehow, they'd all sat down where they belonged. All of them. The feeling was like a firm anchor in stormy weather. 

He uncorked the bottle and lifted it towards Usopp, a silent question. The sniper blinked and then hastily pushed his coffee cup towards Zoro, looking pleased at the gesture. The masquerade was still fresh in their minds; Usopp acted surprised each time his nakama treated him the same as before (the idiot). 

Sanji poured the coffee and Zoro added some extra heat, even into Chopper's mug. Sanji made an abrupt 'hit me again' gesture when Zoro got to the cook's cup. Zoro measured in some more of the brandy, and gave himself the same dose. Robin was the only one to smile her thanks when he got to her. Robin looked...strange since they'd gotten her back. The quiet darkness in her eyes was still there, but now it included them instead of keeping them out, and without that shell she seemed new and vulnerable. It was as unsettling as the way the table was now oriented in regards to the stove, or the bigger galley, or the dark Adam wood around them.

The mood was quiet after the crazy excitement of exploring their new home and leaving Water 7. It might be the weather, or it might be their new ship...Goofy on the outside, and as full of helpful gadgets and stupid impractical gizmos as one would expect Franky's baby to be, but when he'd looked beneath that, Zoro had seen a somber, lethal beauty cutting the waves beneath its prow. Franky used to build battleships and it showed. This was the apprentice of the man who'd built Gold Roger's ship; as foreshadowing went, you couldn't paint it on any thicker. Destiny was hammered into the beams, twined around the rigging. This was it: this was the ship that would carry them to Raftel, with the World Government and just about everybody else behind them, and only the One Piece or death up ahead. One or the other, and now it was just a matter of time...

"Isn't this amazing?! We have six cannons! And there's twice as much room, and I still have my special seat!"

Yeah, it wasn't surprising that everybody was feeling a little subdued, with one predictable exception. The whole predestination thing went right over Luffy's enthusiastic head. Or maybe their captain just saw further and better than they could. Over half a year at sea together and Zoro still hadn't figured that one out.

Sanji had been about to pour their captain his coffee; he moved the pot smoothly away after only a small splash. With the great teamwork they _were_ capable of when they tried, Zoro barely wet Luffy's serving with the brandy. 

Luffy didn't notice he'd been shorted on both caffeine and booze. "Hey, Chopper, did you see? You have an infirmary now!" 

Chopper nearly spilled his drink as he wobbled. "For-for me?! That doesn't make me happy! Not at all!" But then the overall mood caught up with him again and he buried his blue nose in his mug.

"And there's an ammunition's room, too, off of the hold. Somebody painted 'Luffy, keep out' on it." Luffy scratched his nose.

"That'd be me," Usopp said. His tension ratcheted until Luffy lost the quizzical expression and grinned. After a couple of false starts, Usopp grinned back. Zoro decided that if the pair of numbskulls hadn't gotten their act straightened out by tomorrow, he'd grab one in each hand and bang them together until they were back to normal. 

Uncowed, Luffy looked around for someone to share his enthusiasm. 

"Zoro? Sanji? Did you guys see the new gun deck?"

"Only in passing." Zoro looked at his captain incuriously, wondering why Luffy thought he would care about cannons, however many they had. He wasn't the ship's sharpshooter, he was the one who got up close and personal and cut things.

Nami put down her cup abruptly and opened her mouth.

Sanji stirred something on the stove, something that smelled damn good. "I looked around after I sorted out our provisions. Having the ammo dump separate from the gun deck is probably a good safety precaution, and the hold is better organized than before. That automatic lighting's a nice touch as well. We owe Franky big."

Luffy grinned like half a melon and put his hands behind his head. "Yeah, you guys won't need a storm lantern anymore."

Zoro spilled his coffee. It scalded his fingers, but he didn't notice.

"Luffy! You idiot, I told you-" Then Nami's hand shot to her mouth.

"What?" said Chopper, puzzled.

One look at Usopp's lobster-red face indicated he knew the answer. Zoro didn't even bother turning towards Robin; he stared at the black round hole that was his cup of coffee instead.

Luffy had an 'uh-oh' tone to his voice. "I didn't say anything. Not about what we aren't supposed to talk about. Right? I just said-" There was a muffled thud. Nami, probably. Zoro was thankful she'd stopped Luffy from talking, but the very fact that _she_ had stopped Luffy from talking was the worst news in and of itself.

Zoro finally dared to look up at Sanji. The cook had become absolutely still at the stove, ladle plunged unmoving in a pot.

"What?" Chopper repeated, a bit plaintively. Then he glanced at Usopp, said "Oh. That." and buried his nose in his mug again. Great, even Chopper...

Robin stood up, black hair cascading forward like a curtain to cover her expression. "Navigator-san, before we eat, perhaps we could go over that map you mentioned. Captain-san, please come with us."

Nami didn't wait for Luffy to acquiesce and dragged him out by his rubber neck. 

Usopp scrambled to his feet. "Chopper, hey, come on, I've got something to show you in the ammo dump."

"Oh? What is it?"

"I don't know but it's something amazing!" Usopp gibbered and ran out of the galley, the doctor at his heels.

My nakama, Zoro thought; as subtle as a sack of hammers. But he was grateful for the space.

At the stove, Sanij started to stir again, his shoulders stiffer than the cutting board. The silence stretched. Zoro finished his coffee in three burning gulps. After a few seconds of reflection, he reached for the brandy bottle.

"Ah man, Luffy...Only he'd just blurt it out," Sanji finally said. 

"The others knew too. Probably before him."

"Yeah."

Zoro paused as he poured. Sanji had said it quite simply. 

"You're not surprised?"

Sanji shrugged, then turned the heat down under a pot. "It's a small ship. Did you think we could keep something like that to ourselves forever?"

Zoro frowned. "But what was the point of all the secrecy then? All that 'do you want to trade guard duties tonight' and sneaking down to the-"

Sanji jerked around, though not far enough for Zoro to see more than a curtain of bangs over his profile. His voice was an irritated staccato. "What? It's the trade off, idiot. You don't rub it in people's faces. It's- just not something you talk about. A secret."

"You just said everybody knew."

"Yeah, but it's still a secret."

Zoro looked at the brandy and wondered if that might help him understand this particular sleight of mind. Probably not. The worst was, the way Nami, Robin and Usopp had reacted, they were perfectly tuned in to this secret-not-a-secret, leaving Zoro out in the cold with Luffy, which wasn't much consolation.

"Even the girls know," Zoro said, because he couldn't help but poke.

Sanji was still for just the right amount of time for Zoro to exceptionally regret his impulse, but then the cook shrugged, put the hand with the ladle on his hip above the apron string and scratched the back of his head with the other. "Yeah, I was really hoping they'd be too innocent to guess, but of course they're also smarter than all of us guys put together, right?"

Zoro grunted. The cook was probably right. And he still hadn't turned around. 

"I don't give a damn," Zoro found himself saying. "It's none of their business." That hadn't come out right. "They're nakama," he added slowly. "They don't mind."

Silence. 

Oh hell...

"We can stop if you want." 

He thought the words would come out grudging. Oddly enough, they didn't. Great, now the damn cook would think it was _fine_ with Zoro if they stopped trading off. Zoro wasn't fine with that. Not at all, and not just because he was going to have to get used to taking care of himself from now on.

But he just wanted Sanji to turn around, and possibly yell at him...

Sanji was silent for too long, examining Zoro in the reflection from a large copper pot hanging by its handle near the stove. Zoro couldn't see the other's expression, just the curly eyebrow and the inscrutable gaze beneath, reflected in the metal surface.

"Go call them in. The sauce will turn if I leave it on the burner any longer."

Zoro shifted on his seat...but hell, if Sanji didn't want to talk about this, Zoro certainly didn't. He shoved back the bench and went out into the blustering rain-filled wind to go shepherd his scattered crewmates back to the galley before the sauce burned or turned or whatever it was that overcooked sauce did, leading to the holy wrath of the cook descending upon all.

Conversation at the table was a bit stilted for a couple of minutes, but Luffy and Chopper soon got it flowing along the usual channels and it ended in a three-way fight over the last stuffed cutlet that put zany echoes in every inch of their new ship.

An hour later, Zoro rolled into his hammock, yawned once and drifted off to sleep almost immediately with the practiced ease of the fighter who knew it was wise to rest when he could. He'd see what tomorrow would bring.

In any event, 'tomorrow' turned out to be three minutes after midnight, at the end of Sanji's watch. Zoro woke up abruptly with a hand pressed over his mouth; fingers that smelled of nicotine kept him from punching on instinct.

It was dark in the men's quarters. There were two individual cabins on their new ship, for the captain and the first mate, but Luffy and Zoro had slung up their hammocks with the rest of the guys without a second's thought. Even the girls had turned down the rooms when offered, preferring the smaller foredeck as their common quarters, same as before. In the large darkened room, too big for what scant furniture they'd saved from the Merry, Zoro could hear Luffy snoring like an elastic band, Usopp's nasal breathing and Chopper's little snuffling noises. 

The hand fell to his top and tugged. Zoro rolled out of his hammock in silence and followed the barely-seen shape of the cook. 

Sanji's steps led to the hold, redolent of new wood, tar and the dry goods Sanji had stored there. The floor was reinforced with steel hatches. Zoro let his feet fall softly and stopped right inside the door. 

With a click, the lights came on; some newfangled invention Franky had installed, fuelled by the same hydro-something power that now heated their shower water. Zoro was nearly overcome with a wave of irritation - resentment, truthfully. The sight before him was all gleaming and efficient, with its ammo dump at the end, its lighting, its dividers organizing their equipment and making it easily accessible...and Zoro only wanted Merry's dusty ramshackle wooden hold back, with the storm lantern swinging from a nail and putting highlights the color of good whiskey into Sanji's hair. The feeling was so irrational, not to say bloody stupid and ungrateful, that Zoro scowled at himself.

Sanji was silent at his side, staring into the hold, then he reached over without looking and flicked the lights off again. Zoro blinked at lurid red afterimages jumping out at him from the darkness.

A familiar click. Sanji's lighter. It drew flickering gold and black shapes onto Sanji's profile, lost in the fall of bangs. Then he was a shadow against the light, sauntering off between the storage bins. Zoro followed, expecting them to head towards the lower gun deck, but Sanji paused halfway through the hold. He was looking down at the knee-high tarp that covered the large square of the folded spare sails, which Franky had been kind enough to include. The lighter flicked off, making Zoro blink away more squiggles from his vision. 

He heard a light patter; the sound of Sanji's fingers flipping something around, probably the lighter. The minute stretched into another. Having Sanji drag him down to the hold had raised Zoro's hopes, but they now crashed and died. This didn't bode well. Damn. It wasn't just the trade-off; Zoro had survived nineteen years without blowjobs, he could presumably last a few more. It was something more intangible that bothered him. But what mattered was the rest, Zoro told himself; 'the rest' being an unnameable mishmash of sparring with Sanji, fighting at his side, occasionally griping at each other and not having to watch Sanji's back go all stiff and unresponsive...Zoro stuck his hands in his pockets and waited for the bloody cook to make up his bloody mind, if he hadn't already. 

"Siddown," Sanji finally muttered. 

Zoro's voice, sounding fed up and much louder than Sanji's, shouldered the silence aside. "If you're going to tell me you want to quit, you can tell me standing up. Hell, you could have told me out on the deck, instead of-"

"We're not quitting anything, dumbass. Sit down."

Ooooh...? Well, that was good news. Zoro was a bit surprised, but far from unhappy to hear it. Deciding not to question good fortune, he felt the edge of the tarp with his foot and sat down. It was one of their little habits: the one who called for the trade-off started first.

There was a shuffle of cloth and a soft thump, Sanji dropping the heavy coat he'd worn on watch. And then-

And then Zoro felt two hands settle on his shoulders - not his thighs. The tarp shifted under extra weight. Zoro leaned back, startled, a sense of presence _right there_ where it wasn't expected. Long fingers felt up his shoulders, slipped around his neck, and while Zoro's mouth was open around a completely understandable "What the hell are you doing?", Sanji's mouth found his.

The first touch was light. A tongue slipped between his lips, a quick lick. Zoro leaned away abruptly, one hand thumping into the tarp behind for support.

The fingers, feeling cool against his neck, tightened but didn't pull him closer. Zoro took a couple of heartbeats to get the picture in his head straight. Sanji had one knee sunk into the tarp between Zoro's thighs, their chests three inches apart, the collar of Sanji's open shirt brushing his chin now that the cook had let him lean back. 

"This okay?" 

Zoro stared up at where Sanji's gruff question had come from and couldn't even see the gleam of an eye. Damn, he wished they had the bloody storm lantern. "I should be asking you. In case you haven't noticed, I'm not a girl."

"Oh god, I am so thoroughly aware of that," Sanji said, a weary grumble in the dark. His breath trickled over Zoro's face. "But the way I see it, we now have some very dangerous people after us. We did declare war on the world government, after all. Those CP9 backstabbers who infiltrated Galley-la showed us we can't trust anybody. I can worship beauty from afar when I see it, but I'm now completely cut off from female comforts even on land, unless I want to get some innocent lady involved in our mess. Looks like I'm stuck with you from now on, and this trip is going to be hard enough without being frustrated on top of that. So...I'll make a few allowances."

Zoro rubbed one eye with the palm of his hand until he saw sparks. "Huh-uh."

"What's that supposed to mean?" Sanji asked suspiciously. 

"It means, is that gonna be your excuse?" Zoro might have diplomatically pretended to be stupid, but he wasn't used to giving quarter like that; not with Sanji.

There was a tense silence above him, then an aggressive mutter of, "Yeah, that's my excuse. Got a problem with that, seaweed-brain?"

Zoro smirked and answered by grabbing the back of the cook's head and fitting their mouths together again by feel in the darkness. He didn't need no bloody excuses. 

Sanji's lips were firm. Zoro's chin rubbed stubble. He'd never kissed anybody before. The closest he'd come before Sanji was some girl who'd thrown herself on his lap in a bar one night when he'd had a bit to drink. She'd tried to kiss him and steal his purse (despite Sanji's long-standing accusations that Zoro was a cad, he'd only shoved her off his knees instead of bruising her wrist to the bone). He had no experience in the matter, but he had learned to give really good head in record time, so he wasn't about to be intimidated. Besides, it probably worked on the same principle, right? 

When he curled his tongue around Sanji's and tugged gently, he got one of those nearly sub-vocal noises that showed he was on the right track. The kiss got wet, deep and rather entangled. Sanji's mouth was salty with a faint aftertaste, like cloves found in an ashtray. Zoro wasn't a smoker, but he thought he could get used to the flavour. 

The darkness made the other senses more immediate. Fingers brushed the back of Zoro's neck, making the small hairs stand on end. Sanji's clothes smelled of cigarette, worse than usual. Zoro had an intuitive vision of the cook chain-smoking up in the crow's nest, staring moodily out into the darkness...hands stuffed in his pockets or rat-a-tat-tating on the railing or relaxing around his cigarette as he finally admitted to himself that, despite his best efforts and Zoro's gender, he'd gotten a bit too caught up in their little gundeck-related activities and couldn't give it up either, even now that the cat was well and truly out of the bag.

How this led to it suddenly being okay to stick his tongue in Zoro's mouth despite Zoro's extremely male set of equipment...was the kind of alchemy only Sanji's brain was capable of. Zoro wasn't going to try to figure that one out, just enjoy the resulting transmutation of their usual trade-off. 

A clump-clump of shoes falling to the floor, then Sanji eased both knees between Zoro's thighs, pushing his legs apart. Sanji levered his hips against the haramaki to shove Zoro onto his back, pinning him down by the shoulders. Zoro grunted and tried to get up onto his elbows, but then Sanji's weight was on his upper body, bearing down, mouth to mouth again. Even more interesting was the way the rest of Sanji's body slid down a bit lower and flexed at the hips. 

Zoro breathed out noisily through his nose as his boner got a full-body rub. Yeah. This wasn't bad. He could see where they were going with this.

The tarp creaked and puffed out air beneath their weight. Sanji's mouth tightened on his, the cook gripping his hair in the dark, so Zoro returned the favour. His hands were always aching to touch when Sanji gave him head. He ran a thumb over Sanji's jaw, gently up over the blink of an eye, got lost following that odd curlicue of an eyebrow for a second and then plunged into Sanji's bangs. Slick, cool from a stint on nightwatch, like feeling the colour gold through the fingertips...Pleasure ran down his skin, to join the happy muddle of his erection getting rubbed. His hands went further, for no better reason than that they could. His fingers traced rough patterns over Sanji's shoulders and back, felt the peak of a shoulder bone, a flare of vertebra. Sanji's tongue licked Zoro's lower lip. Down the hard plane of Sanji's lower back, up again, fingers rucking the shirt up Sanji's side, tugging it from the belt. Sanji's mouth was an inch from his own, both of them panting the same air. Hands were hard on Zoro's neck, but Sanji's attention was on what their lower bodies were doing, spreading Zoro's legs apart more, getting more contact. But Zoro-

Sanji gasped, protest and surprise, as Zoro flipped him over, but Zoro didn't just want to get off, he wanted to _touch_. Sanji's body was beneath his now, wiggling beneath his hands. Zoro's knee pressed down on Sanji's thigh to keep him pinned and his fingers jerked the shirt up, touched skin- ah-

With a growl and a swing of those bloody hips, the mongrel cook shoved him back and was on top of him again- but Zoro tipped them the other way, smirking. He got a sharp jab of knee in the thigh for his pains. Sanji muttered something and shoved them back until he straddled Zoro, a position that, with those legs, would be harder to get out of, especially since the two of them had squirmed and rolled their way to nearer the center of the tarp and Zoro had lost any purchase against the floor. 

Zoro's palms caressed abs and ribs until his hands could go no higher, trapped by fabric. Sanji, breath coming in small, quick intakes, straightened up. The shirt shifted and Zoro could get further up the chest, muscles tensing beneath his fingertips. Bastard cook, he _liked_ this...

More!

It took a bit more effort to heave Sanji off this time, and the stubborn son of a bitch was already struggling to roll them over again when his back hit the tarp for the third time- and then there was a gasp and a vicious whisper of "Hey! Fucker-" as shirt buttons snapped and tumbled onto the plastic. Zoro squirmed on top of him, mouth finding the crook of Sanji's bared shoulder, the ripple of deltoids. His front teeth banged against Sanji's collarbone as the latter flipped them over again. 

"You motherless son of a- you're sewing these back on," Sanji hissed.

\- Whatever just let me touch - 

Sanji put all his weight into it, nailing Zoro to the tarp at the thighs as he bit down on Zoro's mouth. The hands that could swing a steel wok around effortlessly, as well as Sanji's body-weight when he spin-kicked, gripped Zoro's biceps, digging in hard, while Sanji did something flexible and really indecent with their lower bodies. Oh fuck-

It was a muddled struggle to hump, kiss, grip and paw...they tumbled over the tarp in fits and starts, nearly careening off twice. It was a game. It was a fight. It was fun. Their kind of fun. Zoro had the upper body strength, Sanji had the lower to spare. It might have been evenly matched, but Sanji had free rein with those bloody long legs of his while Zoro's hands were busy, cutting down on what he could do. The end was inevitable, but it was interesting getting there.

Finally Sanji got the upper hand, legs wrapped around Zoro's thighs, giving him a nice purchase to grind down and get a noise out of Zoro that the latter would qualify as a grunt of appreciation but, honestly, might have been a bit closer to a groan or maybe even a whimper. There was a snicker in the dark above Zoro's head. But it was way too soon to crow victory. Zoro gave up trying to tip Sanji off, but his hands raked down the back of the much-rumpled shirt and grabbed Sanji's ass.

"Hey!" Sanji said in a hoarse whisper. Zoro wasn't sure why he was still whispering, they were far enough from the living quarters, and their nakama knew what they were up to anyway.

Sanji was of the lithe-and-sinewy type of build. Zoro knew the man had muscles, in fact he'd just spent the last quarter of an hour meeting some of them up close and personal, but Sanji wasn't bulky. Right here, though, was where the power was packed. Zoro's hands drew hard lines down Sanji's thighs. In his heated mind, it was like drawing a line down the plane of a blade, feeling the pattern ripple beneath his fingertips...and suddenly the pressure of anticipation below the belt went from pleasure to pain. Damn, he needed to get off, _now_!

At this point, the contrary bastard stopped grinding their dicks together and decided that it was a good time to argue. "Oi, you fucking marim-uhn..." He squirmed away from Zoro's flexed hips. "Hands off my ass, you shitty bastard."

No. Fucking. Way. Zoro cracked open an eye- pointless exercise, the darkness of the closed hold was too deep to become accustomed to. "Hmmwhy, you prefer to have me on top of you?"

Sanji's breath was all over the place, he had to be ready to pop too. "I-hn-" 

"We can. If you want. This is better though." Zoro traced a rough path up the spine again, and back down to Sanji's thighs, tugging at the cook's butt in passing to get him moving again. "You got more movement range, with those squiggly hips of yours." But I get to touch, was the unspoken counterpart of the deal.

There was a mutter that suggested Zoro do something physically impossible with the word 'squiggly'. But then the cook stopped being a pig-headed moron and started using those hips, and oh man...

Zoro gripped hard, controlling some of the ride. His mind blurred, went red-hot- with just one last thought. This- this shared motion...this breathless panting thing they were doing...this wasn't the trade-off, with its tit-for-tat arithmetic; this was _sex_.

He could tell Sanji was close, the way the movements were getting savage. Sanji wrenched his head and shoulders away from where Zoro was pawing his back beneath the shirt. He ground down, legs tightening in a way that reminded Zoro that he was being embraced by two weapons that could break his bones. The strength behind the litheness hit Zoro like a rush. Hands clamped down on Sanji's ass as much as they could, fingers digging in cloth and causing it to creak- his jaw clenched and he came, nose pressed against Sanji's ribs. 

The pleasure peaked and went bouncing down the various levels with each jolt until it went all the way to uncomfortable. Sanji was still grinding down on him, breathless, pushing against a suddenly very sensitive area. Zoro instinctively shoved away the source of discomfort-

"Ahshitdon'tmove!" Sanji yelped, voice shattering the dark as he scrabbled to rub-touch- _screw_ \- 

Zoro took pity on the guy and tossed Sanji onto his back. That got him a truly vile curse from the cook, which gave way to a groan as Zoro rubbed his hand down the front of Sanji's pants. His other fingers found the belt buckle, loosened it quickly, slipped his hands into the warmth...Sanji cursed again, a hoarse whisper without anywhere near as much venom. Zoro grinned in the darkness, enjoying the way Sanji was writhing and twisting on the tarp until he came into Zoro's hand. Damn, he wished he had that storm lantern, to see the cook get off without having his face buried in Sanji's groin...

He licked a splash on his wrist and fell back onto the tarp which heaved a sleepy sigh as whatever air they hadn't pounded out yet escaped. Zoro blinked in sympathy at the sound. It was past one in the morning, he should be in his hammock. Not that he was complaining...

Sanji let out a slow deep breath, a sound like a lazy trickle of smoke falling from his lips. Zoro smirked. Yeah, that hadn't been bad at all, even without Sanji's clever mouth and fingers thrown into the mix. 

"When's your next night watch?" Sanji drawled

"Dunno. Three-four days, I imagine." 

"'Kay. Wake me up when you get off. Without rousing the whole bloody ship in the process."

Zoro scratched himself idly, pretending that the tepid and increasingly sticky pool near his beltline was blood because he'd learned to ignore that. "You know they'll figure out what we're up to sooner or later."

"Then it'll be later," Sanji growled, making the spare sail shift as he sat up, "and we're still going to be discreet. Do you have any tact or delicacy at all, you shitty marimo? No, don't answer that."

There was the sound of Sanji putting on his shoes, then...Zoro opened his eyes and tilted his head curiously when he felt Sanji's hands pat around on the tarp and brush his sides. There was an indistinct mutter followed by a clink. The next instant, the lighter threw a picture of a gloriously dishevelled Sanji into full technicolor. His shirt was hanging open, his hair was a well-pawed muddle, his belt was undone and there were suspicious splotches on the black pants and hard abs. A perfect mess for a guy who usually took pains with his appearance. Zoro religiously noted every detail into his 'looks that suit Sanji' file for later perusal. The cook might even look better like that than smashed through a table.

"Stop staring at me and help me find my fucking buttons, dipshit." 

Zoro yawned. "Look for them tomorrow."

Sanji gave him that sardonic superior look he reserved for Zoro at his most annoying, though it was rather spoiled when he clenched his jaw around a sympathetic yawn. He looked tired. Zoro said so. That got him a contemptuous sniff. 

The cook straightened up and went through the complicated task of removing his shirt without setting it on fire with the lighter. Zoro got the shirt stuffed into his appreciative smirk before he could say something that would get him kicked across the tarp. 

"Here. You find them, you sew them back on, and I might forget the incident. If you're amazingly lucky. Give me a thirty minute headstart before you come out, I want to wash off."

"Yeah..." Zoro yawned a second time. Sanji zipped his coat up over his bare chest and strode out without a backward glance. The ghost of light slipped fluidly across the metal-reinforced bulkheads to mark his passage until the door closed. Zoro, who didn't smoke or carry matches, would have to get back by feel, but that wasn't a problem. He rumpled the shirt against his chest and closed his eyes. Hell, he might even sleep here tonight...

The hold murmured with the sound of waves slipping beneath the prow. Every shift made wood creak and some loose piece of equipment thump in one of the storage bins. Zoro let it rock him. He listened to the heartbeat of the ship as his own gradually slowed from a growl to a purr. His body felt heavy on the tarp, lazy with pleasure, warmth, a few satisfying near-bruises fading...his lips sure felt roughed up...

"That was a bit of a turnaround," he informed the darkness that was already starting to feel more familiar. He'd sort of hoped the other man would continue trading off, but he'd never expected this. It hadn't been ten bloody days since he'd kissed Sanji and the cook had sent him flying with a kick to the ribs. 

Ten days in which they'd gone to Enies Lobby, burned a flag, found their nakama, lost Merry and escaped with their lives. 

Yeah, long enough for a lot to change. 

...Stupid cook, to have thought he could just swap jerk-offs with Zoro and never get emotionally involved. Sure, people could fuck without feelings, but it wasn't the trade-off itself that had snared them, it was...it was the complicity of sneaking around and keeping it a secret, it was finding out what turned the other on; making it into a competition, sharing a drink afterwards, and then going back out on deck and being crewmates again, and occasionally fighting like two tomcats tied in a bag just because they felt like it. Zoro had known from the start he was going to get way too into this, while Sanji had assumed that, because Zoro was a guy, he himself would not. But it wasn't a matter of gender, it was a matter of being nakama, of being way too close to begin with. Their 'trade-offs' were bound to get mixed up in the rest of their lives, become a pattern to the way they interacted. 

Stupid cook, yeah, but Zoro, who normally had good instincts and a sense of which way someone would jump, should have seen this coming a mile away too. He'd been just as stupid, to think Sanji really could remain that aloof. 

Now there was a solid link between them that had grown despite intent and attempts to control it, that they apparently couldn't or didn't want to break, and that might cause them pain somewhere down the line. And while Zoro's overarching purpose still took priority over everything else, damned if he wanted to see the stupid cook get his stupid little feelings hurt...All this spelled Weakness to Zoro. His old self - the man he'd been less than a year ago - would have reviled him for it. That other Zoro had split from Johnny and Yosaku when he felt himself getting too close to the endearing pair of losers, and he'd tried to turn Luffy down the second the latter had said the word 'nakama'.

Maybe he should have told Sanji to shove it on that very first day the other man had suggested a trade-off, but it was way too late now. Zoro wasn't one to spend time regretting what couldn't be changed. He wasn't all that convinced there was anything to regret, anyway. He'd learned a few things about himself and these seeming weaknesses called bonds this past fortnight. He'd been pretty pathetic back at Water 7 when he'd thought Robin had betrayed them (then again, so had Luffy; that salvaged his pride a bit). He'd never been stronger when fighting to get Robin back, either.

That strength he'd found in the Tower of Justice...he loved it and he was almost a bit afraid of it, and he knew he'd never have found it in himself if he'd not needed to be more than he was - more than even human - at that point in time, for the sake of somebody else.

Strength not born of enduring or training. Strength that looked like a weakness until you put it under fire. He'd been thinking about it for days, alone on the waterfronts of Water 7, and though he could feel its shape in his mind, he had to think about it some more...

Zoro blinked sleepily. Exactly how these nebulous concepts connected back to the fact he was going to have Sanji's tongue in his mouth on a regular basis in the coming months and that this was now a part of the Straw Hats too, acknowledged and above board - but still a secret, feh - well, that was more complex, but his gut instinct told him that it might not be such a bad thing.

He'd run with that.


	4. Yaki-ire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Yaki-ire_ \- hardening and tempering the blade, the decisive moment of its creation that will make or break it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Significant time-jump between this chapter and the previous one, going past current published chapters and all the way past the supposed end of the series.

"It's time," Zoro said absently as he slipped his swords into his haramaki. His gaze did not leave the shoreline. Such a _grey_ place for a popinjay who liked his shirts loud and his hats feathery. Then again, Mihawk's clothes weren't what defined him, anymore than the jewels on the hilt defined the pitch black blade he used to chop ambitious young idiots into two. The grey cliffs with the stunted trees clinging to them would make a good place to train undistracted, Zoro judged. 

Luffy was perched on the railing, rubbernecking for all he was worth, eyes wide with curiosity. What he found so fascinating in that guano-laden lump of rock, only he knew. Sanji was sitting a few feet away on a box of cannonballs, smoking and giving Zoro an unreadable look.

"You want to go now? You sure?" Luffy's head did a one-eighty - one of his more cringe-worthy habits - as he turned from the island to his first mate. "It's nearly time for dinner."

Zoro rolled his eyes. "I'm not going to eat right before a fight, Luffy."

"Night's falling," Sanji said from behind the hand holding the cigarette.

"I know. S'time." Zoro walked towards the railing. There was a small path winding up from the shoreline to the grey ridges. 

Fatefully - or perhaps ironically, after going halfway around the world - they were now only a few hundred nautical leagues away from where Mihawk had cut Zoro down the first time. No wonder Don Krieg had stumbled upon the Shichibukai right at the entrance of the Grand Line, and yes, probably caught him napping and in a foul mood when disturbed in his private retreat. It'd taken the Straw Hats several weeks to sail back to near Reverse Mountain and then into the calm belt to reach this place, which existed on no map and which no log pose would ever point to, according to Nami. They'd followed the arrow of an Eternal Pose which Zoro had found in the wreckage of the Shichibukai guest quarters in Mariejoie, in a small casket with his name on it. There was no indication who'd left it or where it would lead or what it was for, but Zoro knew, just as he knew that the time was now. It had taken more than a few weeks to get here; it'd taken eleven months since he'd joined with Luffy, it'd taken years since he'd made his promise to Kuina, it'd taken a lifetime. 

The time was now. 

In the galley over lunch, Zoro had made it clear that he expected to face this alone. It was personal, the others couldn't help him with this, and besides, it was bound to be intensely bloody. Most of the Straw Hats still weren't all that comfortable with bloodshed, and he liked them that way. Though it was perfectly understood that Luffy, his captain, the Pirate King, the one who'd joined their mad dreams together so long ago, would be at his side.

That just left one question, then. A question that was silently sitting on a box, smoking a cigarette at him. 

Damn cook. Always making life more complicated than it needed to be. They'd been nakama for nearly a year. A bit more these past six months, but that was part and parcel of the rest; the rivalry, the teamwork, the fights, the way they'd wind up sitting a couple of feet apart during parties or the occasional quiet evening, the boundaries that were still there and that meant Sanji actually thought he had to ask his silent question. Cretin.

Luffy threw his arms forward, caught a hunk of rock thirty yards away and catapulted ashore with a whoop. 

Zoro grabbed the rigging, stepped up onto the railing and spoke over his shoulder. "You coming?" 

Sanji stood up and followed him without a word.

Zoro trudged up the path of grey stone. He thought he could feel gazes follow his progress from the ship. He didn't look back. Luffy was waiting for him at the top of the ridge. His grin widened when he saw Sanji, but he didn't say anything. 

The path was narrow, dug by years of a single pair of boots going to and from the natural harbour; it led them over the ridge and down again, about half a mile. By that time the sun had left a blood-smeared hole on the horizon and the crags were drowning in shadows. Here and there they found other signs the island was inhabited. A crumbling section of the rocky path had been shored up; an indifferent job, the one living here wasn't a stone-mason. Further along, a row of boulders had been sliced to bits, probably as a warm-up exercise, and an empty bottle had been left beneath a gnarled crab-apple tree on a green patch of grass among the grey rocks. 

"Pleasant," Sanji sneered, tromping along with his hands in his pockets. "I wonder who does his decorating. What's that over-...there. Oh."

"What's what?" Luffy asked, from further along the path. 

"Nothing," Sanji snapped, brushing past Zoro and giving Luffy's shoulder a shove before their captain could turn around. Zoro clasped his hands in brief salute to the row of graves in the shadow of a ridge and followed. 

The path found its way to a flat stretch of meadow, trees and twilight. Where the north rise broke into a cliff and fell into the sea, a house of stone and driftwood timber had been propped against rock, with a three-way view of the ocean. It was simple and savage, a good place to live if one didn't mind solitude and lots of it. Not that a good or a bad place to live was the point. This was not Mihawk's home. Zoro figured the man didn't have one. This was a place to train; to get away for a time from the foolish small fry trying to challenge him; and to wait. 

"It'll be night in a few minutes," Sanji muttered, turning around on himself before facing the low, stone house. "How are you going to see anything?"

Like an uncanny answer, there was a distant clunk, a hiss and a sudden crackle to the left of their position. A red and golden glow flickered into life in the shadow of a ragged peak. A bonfire was catching with the speed and whining rustle of dry wood doused in oil. It bolded the outline of the figure waiting for them. 

"He sure likes his dramatic gestures, doesn't he," Sanji said, voice like scouring powder.

"Look, there he is! Mihawk! Hi! We're here-ow! Why'd you kick me?" 

"...Too many reasons, Luffy, too many reasons."

Zoro absently checked the draw on his swords and headed towards the light. Luffy and Sanji trailed him.

Mihawk was pretty much as Zoro remembered him, only this time the shirt was gold and black paisley and he'd ditched the hat. The jewelled hilt rising above his back glinted in the light of the bonfire. He nodded at Zoro before focusing on his companions. 

"Pirate King. Greetings."

Luffy came to a stop right next to Zoro and waved. "Hi!"

Mihawk was studying him thoughtfully. "I believed your dream to be even less attainable than your friend's, but in fact, you realized it first..."

"Huh-uh, we made it to the One Piece. It was a really cool fight," Luffy said, with his typical mastery of the understatement. 

"You succeeded against all odds, and the world aligned against you."

"Yeah, but I had help!" Luffy's rubbery arms swung up and clumped Zoro and Sanji on the shoulder, making them stagger.

Mihawk's eyes flickered incuriously over Sanji before settling on Luffy again. "I see. And then you went about destroying the World Government."

Luffy tilted his head as if the thought was entirely novel. "Me? No, not really, that kind of fell down on its own."

"It was old, rotten, its purpose lost. But I believe you kicked the struts a few times," Mihawk said dryly. 

"I kicked a lot of things. But now, I'm just here to watch." Luffy plopped himself down in a rubbery heap, eyes and a crescent grin still fixed on Mihawk, as they'd been since the fire had gone up. Zoro looked from his captain to Mihawk and wondered if the Shichibukai _got_ Monkey D Luffy at all. 

Sanji stirred, and prodded Luffy with a foot. "Not here, Luffy, let's sit further back."

"Much further back," Zoro said. He watched them nearly disappear from the circle of light refracting off the stone face, until they picked a lump of rock and sat down. Luffy perched there all knees and elbows, Sanji sat with his legs straight out before him, composed as a cat, fingers fishing in his breast pocket. 

Zoro turned back towards Mihawk. Now it was just the two of them. In a way, it'd always been.

"Did I make you wait long?" Zoro tugged the bandana from his arm.

Mihawk's fraction of a shrug dismissed the notion of time and scorned it for good measure. "You went faster than I'd originally anticipated. I hope this means the wait is still justified, and won't end in disappointment." 

"That's what we're here to find out." The cloth tightened around his forehead, the sensation as familiar as the pattern of Wadou's hilt on his palm. "Want to show me what you got? For real, this time?"

Mihawk didn't answer. Directly. Instead-

Zoro had been hanging out in prestigious company these past couple of months, so he was used to battle auras that could knock over small buildings. He hadn't been on a pleasure cruise all this time, after all. After being around Whitebeard when he lost his rag, one developed a sense of perspective.

This wasn't that old pirate's raging typhoon of a presence. Mihawk was more contained, more centered. It wasn't a man standing there in front of the blaze; it was a blade shaped into a soul.

Those hawk eyes scrutinized Zoro; it was like being cut open all over again. 

"Say...before we start, I wanted to say sorry for what happened last year," Zoro drawled, scratching an ear beneath the cloth of the bandana. "When you said back then that I should be able to tell at a glance that I couldn’t take you on...? Yeah. I can't figure out why you didn't just kill me out of hand, for the gall of thinking I could actually beat you."

The eyes glinted. "And now? What do you think?"

Zoro gave a knife-like grin. "Now I _know_ I can." 

Mihawk's short rasp of laughter reminded him of the scrape of a sword being polished. It lessened the awe-inspiring tension of his presence. Behind him, Zoro heard Sanji breathe out slowly and Luffy chuckle with a stage whisper of "Ooooyah, that was pretty intense."

"You may be right. I think you're close, young warrior. Too close for me to tell. Which leaves us only one way to determine our fates." Mihawk reached for the black sword on his back.

Zoro drew as well. Every second of his life to date had been aimed at this moment. 

Mihawk moved to one side, politely, letting Zoro take position so they both had the bonfire off to one side. The light was still pretty bad, but the handicap was the same for both. Zoro placed Wadou's hilt between his teeth, the salty tang of the pommel and the weight a part of him; his boots grated on rock as he tested the footing. Mihawk held the black sword out before him in both hands, making the bloody big thing look weightless.

The battle began in stillness. The two masters faced each other and wills clashed. The instant metal actually met, it would be over shortly thereafter. They were too close in level to survive many passes against each other.

The fire hissed and crackled, warm against Zoro's left side. His senses spiralled in. Past the stunted breeze making the fire spit and flare, the distant scream of a gull heading towards the cliffs for the night, the stones, the sea crashing a few hundred yards away. Dismissed. Negated. The non-noises beyond his perception included the chewing of Luffy's lower lip and the cartilage-creak of Sanji's fingers gripping his lighter, a cigarette he'd never smoke shredded at his feet. Zoro moved beyond. Into himself. Past the beating of his heart, steady and solid. The creak of muscles as blood flowed through them and the minutes passed. The flare of knowledge as he followed every twitch of Mihawk's gaze. Weighing. Judging. Playing that first and possibly last strike in their minds over and over again until their will made one of them the victor.

It was the perfect place, the perfect time. Zoro attacked.

Half the bonfire collapsed, flaming logs rolling over stone, and a nearby rock shattered, but every ounce of strength had been otherwise too focused to cause widespread damage. Between them, they could conceivably tear this island apart, but they were only interested in each other. 

Zoro turned, boots catching in the groove they'd carved through earth and rock, less than a distraction to his concentration. No elaborate moves, no setup, no parrying; no point. Not where they stood, at this summit where there was only room for one. The strikes had gone off at the same split second. Metal had hit metal. The first pass had been inconclusive. The air pressure had done a bit of damage on the side; nothing noteworthy. Zoro was bleeding, a shallow cut across his ribs, but so was Mihawk, a scratch on the shoulder and another one at the hip. Not as serious, but Zoro had taken the initiative, and that counted as much as blood spilled. 

They faced each other again. Only stillness, within and without. 

After a hundred heartbeats, the night moved and swords crashed again. Zoro spun. He didn't dodge; he simply wasn't where the black blade was. Kitetsu cut darkness too, turned and sliced again, and still hit nothing. Back to another face-off.

Zoro's body had gone the way of all other distractions; there, yet not. There was only his heartbeat, faster now but still steady, and his swords, and his will against his opponent's. Everything else was gone. He was stripped to the bare bones.

Now.

This time the four swords clashed together and held; an instant caught in time like a dying butterfly stuck in resin. Power rippled out from the single point of intersection, crunching stone around them. Neither of them noticed. Metal battled against metal, stretched and keened until finally the weight of a dream tipped the scales.

The black sword shattered.

Zoro felt earth beneath his feet again as his momentum ploughed a long gash. He stopped, straightened, sheathed his swords in three smooth movements. Breathed in, breathed out. Licked something salty on his lips. His body seemed to be coming back from a long distance, changing from steel and will, back into flesh.

The world was still struggling to break away from that single moment in time and move on. He couldn’t see Mihawk. He couldn't see anything. The night and the fire warred at the edge of his vision. But his was the only aura left.

"I..."

He turned towards where he knew Luffy and Sanji were. He could make them out, they were getting to their feet, intent expressions breaking into jubilant smiles-

-collapsing back into looks of alarm. Zoro blinked and followed their gazes to where a black shard the width of a hand was punched into his lower abdomen. There was another sliver stuck in his chest and the odd feeling of pressure at a point on his back told him it might well be poking out the other side, too. That looked kind of bad. Even for him. So it wasn't the world that was swaying like that...

"Damn," he mumbled, "does that mean it's a draw...?" 

He reached out a hand to his friends running towards him but the night was faster.

 

Zoro worked real hard and pried his eyes open. His mind was swimming, trying to get a point of reference. The last memory trickled through it. Luffy and Sanji. Running towards them. Son of a _bitch_ , had both those bastards hit him at once?! It felt like someone had caved his chest in-

His breath rattled - painfully - as the memory of everything that had happened right before that dumped itself into his brain and waited for him to react. Zoro jerked his head up- bit back a noise of raw pain and let it fall back again. 

"Ah, you're back, I see."

It was the last voice Zoro wanted to hear at this juncture.

No...

He rolled his head to one side and forced his eyes to focus. He was in the men's quarters aboard their ship, lying on a thin mattress in a pile of blankets. Mihawk was sitting at their small wooden table reading a book by the light of a kerosene lamp, jarringly out of place in these familiar surroundings. 

"You..." Zoro tried to drag the words out of his mind, but the fact that Mihawk was here and still standing, and Zoro was flat on his back and wounded _again_ \- it was just too big, too wrong. 

Mihawk knew exactly what he was trying to say, though. He shook his head briefly and leaned over to shove back the blanket draped over his shoulders. The way he moved already told Zoro something was way wrong, before Mihawk lifted up his right arm, heavily bandaged and shorn three inches below the elbow.

Now it really did feel like Luffy had hit him. "I'm sorry." For the mutilation or for not finishing the job honourably, or maybe both. He didn't remember doing that...Zoro could only remember one moment of absolute focus when two of his blades had blocked that black sword and his third katana had shattered it and ploughed through. He'd never even considered for an instant where that blow had landed. 

Mihawk shrugged one-sidedly. In the light, his face was drawn, pale, but he looked perfectly calm about it, a lot more than Zoro did. "That was the outcome."

Zoro stared at the ceiling for a few moments, trying to get this new shape of the world into his head. Then he wiggled his shoulders and craned his neck, checking his body beneath the blanket and making sure he still had all his bits. Yeah, everything looked like it was there, though he had a couple of metal spikes rammed through his chest and gut by the feel of it. Still, that was just pain. He could ignore that. He tried to make sense of the other messages his body was sending him.

"Bloody...hell...how long have I been out?"

"Six days."

"...Yeah, that's what it feels like." He let his head fall back into the pillow. "So..."

So...

He turned his head towards Mihawk, because Roronoa Zoro could also face the outcome without flinching. "I guess that makes it a draw."

"No."

"...No?"

Mihawk shook his head once. "It was a draw until you survived. Now, it's your victory. Assuming you fully recover, and your friends assure me you will." Zoro got a detailed scrutiny, then Mihawk looked down at his book again. "I guess I believe them."

Zoro's face felt like it cracked rather than moved, but the smirk was there all the same, damn it. "Believe them. I won."

The word echoed to every inch of his being. I won. I won! Did you hear that, Kuina?! _We won_!

For a moment he was back in that instant; without a body, without a past or present, he was a living will and three blades built of experience and past battles, all with one intent. Victory. And he'd won. 

He touched the feeling, then put it away. He'd examine it again later; this was not something anyone could ever take away from him, after all. But for now, there was something missing, something that belonged to the Everything Else category but which had grown to be somewhat important to him after all. He glanced around and then focused on Mihawk.

"Where are the others?"

"They left."

Zoro could tell himself that he was a hard-bitten bastard of a swordsman, that still hurt a bit. Particularly Sanji. Not that Sanji was all that much more to him than his other crewmates. Right. Still, the bastard could have hung around long enough to find out if his nakama and occasional lay was going to wake up at some point or not.

"Your crew were considerate enough to offer me passage back to civilisation, since I would have a hard time navigating on my own for now. We came straight here. One of your friends is in trouble."

"Friends? Who?"

"Princess Nefertari. We're in Alabasta."

"Oh, I see," Zoro said, somewhat mollified to hear that Sanji at least had had an undeniably good reason to leave Zoro's bedside. Undeniable for Sanji, that is. "What's going on?"

"Nothing that you need to concern yourself about now." Mihawk's nod took in Zoro's prone state and the bandages over his chest visible at the edge of the blanket. "They had a message awhile back that there was a serious problem brewing here. They-"

"Message?" Zoro's mind was grappling with the fact he'd been out of it for six days. It made the chronology of it all a bit hard to grasp. Mihawk's retreat was more than six days away from Alabasta, even with the Eternal Pose a hopeful Vivi had sent them months ago, so when...how...

"We rode a typhoon to get here." Apparently Zoro had spoken out loud, or else Mihawk had developed mind-reading abilities. "It was an interesting experience. Not one I'd ever had before, and I thought I'd seen just about everything the Grand Line had to offer. Incidentally, were you aware your navigator is insane?"

"Yeah, most of us are," Zoro answered distractedly. He kept getting flashes...but he couldn't pin them down. That'd explain how they'd gotten to Alabasta so fast. Damn, the boat was going to need some more fixing. Even Adam wood couldn't take a Grand Line typhoon and happily sail away afterwards. But when..."When did they get a message from Vivi?"

"At the last port you stopped at before you came to my island, as I understand it. A week before our duel."

Zoro's neck muscles tensed, sending twinges of pain through his torso. "A week?!" 

"That's what they told me."

"They didn't tell _me_. Those..." 

They hadn't told him and they'd sailed straight on towards his final duel anyway, all behaving perfectly- well, the word 'normal' couldn't be used for his nakama, but they hadn't behaved any differently than usual. Zoro had been focusing; he might have missed signs of tension, but they'd done their best to conceal them anyway and avoid anything that might distract him. Damn it. The choice of rushing to help a friend and possibly missing out on his life's goal would have killed him, while hurrying up and not concentrating properly on his duel might _really_ have killed him, for that matter. But it should have been his choice to make anyway. Bastards. He owed them solid. 

"There was a bit of a dilemma after our battle, of course. Your doctor did his best, and once you'd survived the night it looked like you'd make it, but he swore that putting you on a ship and sailing the calm belt and the Grand Line in your condition would kill you. They couldn’t afford to wait, though, so-" 

One of the memories he was trying to pin down was suddenly sharper. Luffy had been slapping him, the little pest. "Zoro! Zoro, wake up! We have to go, and we have to get you to the ship. Either that, or we have to leave you and Chopper and Mihawk here until you're better, and then we can come back-"

"To hell with that," Zoro remembered muttering. He might even have tried to get up at that juncture, which, considering how bad he felt now, six days later, would have been suicidal back then.

His captain had sounded delighted. "Yeah, that's what I thought. Don't worry, I'll make sure you get plenty of sleep and lots to eat, okay?" 

"...I remember...your sword. Your sword was on the cliff..." Back in the present and the men's quarters, Zoro stared at the ceiling and tried to make sense of the memory stuck in his mind like a splinter. Grey cliffs. They'd been sailing away. Sanji...Sanji and Chopper had been carrying him towards the infirmary deck; pulses of pain with every step, though they were trying to be gentle. One last look back at the grey cliffs and on the highest escarpment he'd seen the hilt and broken blade of the black sword sunk into the rock like a cross on a grave. 

"Yes..." Mihawk was staring down at his right arm as if it somehow intrigued him. "That sword was an old soul, and not always a pleasant one. Its masters have lost on occasion, but it had never known defeat. I'm not surprised it tried to take you with it into death."

"Yeah? Well, it failed. I'm fine. I'm gonna be fine. Where are the others? What did you mean when you say they left?" Zoro stirred, annoyed at his own helplessness and lack of grasp on events. 

"We arrived at Alabasta yesterday. Did I mention it was an interesting trip? Your doctor was very upset at all the stress this put on you. He was even more upset at your captain's suggestion that they throw you over the back of a camel and take you with them to Alubarna. That's when he put his foot down. Or hoof, perhaps. He said that doing that really would kill you, _for real_. He repeated that a lot, until even Luffy believed him-"

Zoro snorted. Fuzzball should have relied more on Zoro's stamina.

"- so I agreed to take care of you," Mihawk concluded, as if offering to care for the man who'd beaten and crippled him - and Luffy accepting the offer - was perfectly normal, which, as far as Zoro was concerned, it was. He'd have done the same if the fight had gone the other way.

"Thanks," he grunted as he tried to lever himself up. It hurt. More than he thought it should. Goddamnit, he'd had six days to recover already. He let himself fall back, panting.

Mihawk reached into his breast pocket and lifted a small, thin cigarillo from a pack. It reminded Zoro of Sanji. The comparison was unwelcome.

"You smoke?"

The older swordsman shook his head. "Very rarely. It reduces lung capacity."

"That's exactly what I've always said." Zoro revved himself up for a second try.

Mihawk lit the cigarillo at the kerosene lantern's flame. "What are you doing?"

"I -" Zoro's voice was lost in a wave of pain, but he was sitting up now. "I'm okay. Don't need to be thrown-...over a camel. I can-...hm, damn, that stings a little...I can ride. Where- where are we exactly? How far to Alubarna?"

"Your injuries." The smoke had the dark, sharp smell of burning peat. Not at all like Sanji's brand, which smelled like...like...like cigarettes and Sanji. Zoro's brain was too numb for good metaphors at this point.

"They're manageable. I can heal while I make the trip." Zoro kept his arm clamped to his belly, though he was fairly sure his guts wouldn't fall out. He trusted Chopper to have done a good job, and put stuff back where it should be and sewn it all up. "Did they leave you a map- never mind. Those idiots could have thought this through a bit; it's going to take me fucking ages to reach them. I better start now."

Mihawk watched him impassively for a few seconds, then put his cigarillo between his teeth, leaned over and picked up a home-made blackjack from the table; a small spice bag half-filled with what sounded like Usopp's pachinko balls. He plucked the smoke from his mouth with two fingers and waved the cosh along with the little black stick.

"Your friend left this with me. Sanji. He said you'd try to do something stupid before you were well enough to travel, and that I was to hit you over the head with this hard enough to knock some sense into you if you tried. As a favour to him. Since he made us enough excellent food to last until you're back on your feet, I thought it fair to oblige."

Zoro stared at the weapon.

"He also said he'd get the Alabasta Royal palace to send a guide and a good ride back for you as soon as possible, so it'll be more expedient if you stay here and wait for it."

"...That son of a bitch."

"He seems to know you well." Mihawk took a drag on the cigarillo and examined the cosh hanging from his fingers a couple of inches from his face. "I'm not going to have to use this, am I?"

Zoro sank back down into the blankets and the pillow. "No."

"Good. I find this handicap of mine to be...inconveniencing. It's going to take some getting used to before I'm fit enough to try to hit anyone over the head."

Zoro grumbled something even he couldn't make out anymore. Talking was beginning to hurt. That is, hurt badly enough where it could impinge on his consciousness. He closed his eyes. A week. Bastards should have told him. He was glad they'd gone to help Vivi; the lil' lady had this bad habit of trying to die for her kingdom...Still, Zoro wished Luffy was here, to say 'the Pirate King and the world's greatest swordsman!' with _that_ grin.

He wondered what Sanji had said. Zoro had blacked out at that point, but he'd like to know what Sanji had said when he'd won. The thought was odd. He pushed it away-

Like falling down into a pit, he wondered what Kuina would have said.

She'd have given him that odd, melancholy smile of hers and said, 'I can't believe a loser like you did it. Good job.' And then she'd probably try to whip his ass...

He'd won.

Zoro's hand shook with effort as he lifted it and pressed down hard on his forehead, on his eyes, trying to force the whirl of confusion and triumph and memories of so many, many battles back into his tired mind. He hoped Mihawk wouldn't notice, or think less of him for being a bit overcome by the moment. Then it occurred to him that Mihawk must have been in this very same position once, at one point in his life. Young and incredulous, the ultimate victory brand new in his grasp; Zoro's present, Mihawk's past. By that same token, Zoro was looking at his own future, sitting there and reading a book one-handed in the light of a lamp. And somewhere out there, a kid was picking up a sword.

Things spiralled to a place that was too intense and confusing. Zoro slipped away and fell asleep. 

He slept for ten solid hours and woke up hungry and in no mood for any goddamn philosophy, not with the smell of food floating through the air and Mihawk leaning over him with the riveting news that breakfast was ready if Zoro felt up to it. Zoro was up out of bed before Mihawk finished talking; maybe the other had been about to suggest they eat down in the men's quarter, but Zoro didn't feel like getting spoon-fed or otherwise cosseted. Besides, he'd been in bed for seven whole days, and even if he couldn't remember any of them, he was getting antsy.

Mihawk walked behind him, but didn't offer any help as Zoro made his slow, painful way up the ladder to the hatch and then across the deck towards the galley. The smell of food and the lure of liquor were more than enough incentive to keep Zoro staggering forward. That, and he had to get into shape soon, and go see what the hell was going on in Alubarna.

"Remarkable. Have you always had this kind of metabolism?" 

"Huh?" Zoro glanced back from the bottle rack. Mihawk was leaning against the galley door, watching him.

"Your injuries. You only woke up yesterday, and it's been a mere week since you very nearly died. For real, as your doctor would say."

"M'okay." Zoro heaved his body, which felt three times heavier than usual, over to the table where Mihawk had set out one of Sanji's prepared meals. It was 'invalid food', which meant easy to swallow and featuring nutrient-filled soup, but since Sanji had made it, it'd taste good. Not that Zoro actually tasted it at all until he'd wolfed down half of it and forced himself to slow down a bit and enjoy.

Mihawk watched him for awhile, left hand stuck in his belt; then he shifted away from the door and picked up the bag he'd brought up with him earlier. "I see you can manage on your own from now on. My turn of duty as a nurse was short. I'll be going, then."

"Thanksh 'gain," Zoro mumbled through a mouthful.

Mihawk nodded and opened the door. "Your friends will be coming back for you soon."

"Nah, from what you said, they'll be fighting in Alubarna. But they better send someone over to pick me up." He'd wait for three days; if nobody showed up to take him, he'd go on his own, and when he eventually found his way there, he'd kick Sanji's ass so hard for all the lost time- 

Mihawk glanced outside, at the mid-morning sun already burning hot on the deck. "I doubt the fight will last all that long, once the Pirate King joins the fray."

"Huh. You could be right." Damn, that would be boring. Though maybe Zoro might actually be better off sitting this one out. For once. Hell, it wasn't as if he had to train himself to the limit any more...That concept was just too hard to grasp on a still-empty stomach and with only half a bottle under his belt, so Zoro shelved it.

"I expect your friends will return in a matter of days. Zoro." 

"Hm?"

"Try to be gone when they get back." 

Zoro swallowed and looked up sharply. "Huh?" 

Mihawk was a black shape in the morning light, like a man standing in front of a blazing bonfire. "You should leave before they get here. It would be best for you all if you don't drag out the parting. You can come with me now, if you're fit to travel a little ways. Before you go on alone."

Zoro's spoon and bowl slowly sank back to the table. "What the hell are you talking about?"

Mihawk was silent for what felt like a long time, and though the hawk eyes rested on Zoro, it didn't feel like they were looking at him. "I am probably wasting my breath. If you weren't stubborn, you wouldn't be here. But I'll say this for the future. You are at the median point of your journey, not the end."

He reached absently for the space above his shoulders where his soul used to reside. "These weapons we use and dedicate our lives to...they're instruments of death. When we use them, though, they become more. We become more. You've killed a lot of people to sit here at that table today, but very few out there would think to call you a murderer. You know this. You know what we are. And now you are the best of us.

"Being the best is not an achievement, it is every moment of your life from now on. You owe it to every man and woman who follows the path of the sword to continue being the best; to be the ultimate challenge that will justify their existence or end it. You are now the goal. Make it a worthy one."

"What's that got to do with leaving?" Zoro asked tightly. He couldn't seem to catch his breath. Damn injuries.

"Perhaps nothing. I don't know." Mihawk turned away. "I don't think you can afford any baggage or comforts on this journey you are undertaking. And I don't know if those friends of yours can follow where you're going, either. But I can't say. By the time I sat where you are now, I had no more nakama."

Zoro was blinking at the raw desert light pouring through an empty doorway. He banged his knee on the table leg as he struggled to get up. "Hey- hey, wait!"

Mihawk didn't look back as Zoro staggered out of the galley. He was dressed in ordinary clothes; black pants, a dark red cotton shirt and a red bandana around his neck. Zoro hadn't noticed before, too hungry and tired and in a hurry to get moving again and put some food and booze in his stomach. The red sleeves were short, showing a gash of white bandages across the shoulder and where a right hand should have been. There was a long knife strapped to the back of his belt, and the bag was slung over his good shoulder. He looked so different out in the light of day, in contrast to the figure in Zoro's mind that had driven him like a demon for the past year.

"Where are you heading?" Zoro asked, giving up on the other questions he had. He'd be too stubborn to listen to the answers anyway. 

"To that big port to the south of here. Nanohana, your navigator told me. Grand Line ships leave from there on a daily basis." 

"And then?"

"The New World, I imagine. I am going to go and give an old acquaintance of mine the opportunity to make fun of me. When he's done laughing, maybe he'll show me a trick or two to get my balance back. I never knew how much my right forearm weighed...Who knows, one day, he and I might have the opportunity for that rematch he's mentioned a few times, now that we're back on equal footing." Mihawk put a foot on the railing, studying the tiny port town and the desert around it. Then he took a long step that somehow got him to shore ten yards away. One arm or not, he made it look easy. A few sailors stared at him and a fishmonger dropped his crate of shrimp. Hawk Eyes ignored them and took off down the pier.

"Good luck," Zoro said, leaning painfully against the railing. He got a left-handed wave over a shoulder in return. Zoro watched him leave and hoped that when it was his turn to put it down and walk away, he'd show that much courage. Well, either that or be deep-sixed, which seemed more likely.

 

Of course, Mihawk had been right about one thing at least; once the Pirate King showed up, the fight didn't last long. The World Government counter-rebels quickly slunk off with their tails between their legs. Before that, though, due to the Straw Hats' two-week delay getting there, the Alabastans had had to dig in, put up their defences and start counter-attacking on their own, and maybe that wasn't a bad thing after all. The guards dotted around the palace grounds had a proud look in their eyes, even the injured ones. The few who spotted Zoro did the 'friend-or-foe' thing with considerable enthusiasm, until they recognized him, apologized and let him proceed towards the main gate without asking him what he was doing out and about at four o'clock in the morning.

The way the quarter moon hung alongside the stars could have reminded Zoro of any number of nights on watch, but the one that came to mind was when he and Sanji had been left alone to guard the ship that time. The others had gone with Robin to do something archaeological on an island they'd stopped at. It'd been the one time they'd been able to do it out on the deck, instead of squirreled away somewhere. The lawn had made it comfortable, though the use they'd put it to was probably not one Franky had had in mind when he'd designed it into the ship. The two of them had fallen asleep side by side, then woken up with the moon right about where it was now and done it again. Zoro grinned as he walked across the Royal Palace's courtyard. An early-morning seagull had landed on the figurehead with a small scuffle and Sanji had jumped with a guilty start that had nearly caused a nasty accident, since his dick was in Zoro's mouth at that point. Zoro had strong-armed him back into the grass, finished him off in a mad, breathless rush tasting of the tantalizing risk of discovery, and then made fun of him. It had ended in a small scuffle, a mere three on their personal scale of ten. A good night. 

Zoro wondered absently if his decision would have been different if Sanji were still here, and knew immediately that it would only have made it noisier and harder and ended in a fight; a more serious one, with words as well as blows, the kind that actually hurt. So it was probably a good thing Sanji had left before Vivi even had time to give her victory speech. A message had warned him that Zeff and the Baratie were docked at Roguetown and preparing to head to the Grand Line. Their destination: the All Blue (exclusive map to said sea brought to them courtesy of Nami and for the paltry sum of 50,000 berries, even though Sanji had been the one to determine its location in the first place almost three months ago). Sanji wanted to make sure the restaurant-ship got over Reverse Mountain and through the first crazy part of the Grand Line in one piece. They'd be sailing back by Alabasta, so his nakama would be seeing their cook again in a few weeks. 

By that time, Robin might be back from Mariejoie. Then again, maybe not; when she'd described the government library the revolutionaries had liberated - her eyes shining like Zoro had rarely seen them shine - she'd made it sound like a really, really big place chock-full of books. She was going to have a lot of work to find the reference texts she was looking for, and then she'd have to decrypt the true meaning behind the Rio Poneglyphs she'd copied from Raftel...well, if she missed out on babysitting the Baratie on its way to the All Blue, she'd see them all on the way back again, right? The Pirate King would be back in time to rendezvous at Alabasta, so the Baratie would have more than enough protection. Luffy was leaving in two days to take Chopper and then Usopp back to visit their hometowns - just for awhile, so they could check on their nearest and dearest. Apparently, Doctorine was really a very young 140, but that didn't mean she should skip out on regular medical checkups, and she scared every other doctor on Drum Island too much to give her one. Usopp was hoping to be there for Kaya's first-year graduation, but he'd leave again right afterwards. For sure! They had all these plans together after all.

Zoro knew his crewmates were a bit dumb; he hadn't known they were blind as well. But maybe they were happier not noticing what was happening. Wiser, perhaps. When it was the nature of something to end, it was better not to fret about it. 

Zoro had seen the inevitable, but he'd stayed at the palace for a few more days anyway, to reassure Chopper about his recovery and to make sure Luffy wasn't going to need him any time soon. The way the new World Government had shaped itself, the Pirate King was going to have a lot of responsibilities from now on. A lot of enemies too, but not the kind a swordsman could fight. Nami would be more help to him. She was smart, extraordinarily vicious when she felt Luffy was being put upon, and didn't hesitate to tell some very important people to go stuff themselves. And if those very important people didn't listen, then Luffy would kick their asses into next month. Yeah, they'd be fine.

"Thanks," he said to the guard, who fastened the gate shut behind him after a respectful nod.

Zoro stepped out into the desert with no particular destination in mind. Which, considering his sense of direction, was undoubtedly for the best. He headed south (it was probably south) with nothing but his three swords for company, same as before. He had one hell of a journey ahead of him and a lot to think about, and...maybe Mihawk was right and this was one path he had to walk alone. That's what he had to find out, and he wasn't sure he could trust his own head and heart when he was around the others. They would understand, especially when they felt the pull of their own destinies tugging at them. All great dreams ended in death or reality, sooner or later.

Because some things never ended, however, he'd slipped the note under Luffy's door before leaving. 

'When any of you need me  
I'll be there'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Technical note: _Yaki-ire_ is the most important and difficult moment of a sword's creation, when the blade is coated in clay, heated to critical temperature and then quickly quenched in water. It's when the blade gains its true edge, due to the chemical transformations that happen at that point. Almost half of the blades break at this stage. Because the temperature is judged by the red color of the heated blade in the clay, yaki-ire is always done at night.


	5. Shitaji

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Shitaji_ \- polishing, the final step to reveal the hamon before the sword finds its home

Two days sailing south of the Redline, the Grand Line played one of its tricks, dragging in currents from all the seas in the world and putting them up for display; a calm stretch of ocean where every fish in creation could be found. It was called the All Blue. 

Sailors found the All Blue on a regular basis. It was quite accessible, situated along a couple of log-pose routes, and not too far from a few populated islands. No, the problem wasn't finding the place. The problem was that those who found it never made it back to tell anybody else about it, because a smorgasbord of all the fish in the world was bound to bring in some bigass predator. 

The Straw Hats had sailed through the area a couple of months before reaching Raftel, and ran into the monstrous kraken that had made the All Blue its home and dinner table for decades. They'd beaten it up (and eaten it, Luffy had been hungry). 

This seriously improved commerce and fishing in the region.

Instead of a kraken, the All Blue now sported a first-class floating restaurant, open for business and fast gaining a reputation as _the_ exciting and trendy place to eat. Zoro stood on the disembarkation ramp of the ship he'd hitched on, and watched well-dressed revellers row in from their vessels and stream into the packed dining room. 

"Please keep moving, sir," said the waiter at the foot of the ramp. 

Zoro shifted the rucksack to his other shoulder, walked down the plank and took a sharp left straight past the startled waiter.

"Wha- hey you! I mean, um, sir, honoured customer, the dining room is _this_ way." 

Zoro found himself facing a flight of stairs and not the kitchen doors he'd been looking for. He must have gotten turned around; it'd been almost a year and a half since he'd been on this ship, back when it was still in the East Blue. No matter. He climbed the stairs to a small upper deck. Nothing much there apart from a chair, an empty wine bottle on the railing and what turned out to be, on inspection, a ten-day old newspaper pinned down by an ashtray.

"Sir! That area is off-limits."

Zoro dropped his rucksack and commandeered the wooden deck chair. He parked one foot on the railing and looked out with some interest at the waters of the All Blue. 

He explained what he wanted to the waiter, and then, when the man continued to argue, he explained himself again, using smaller words. The waiter wouldn't budge, until a long, steady stare sent the pest haring off. Zoro listened to the man's footsteps hurrying along the lower deck and then stop.

"Ah! H-Head Chef?"

"Yeah?"

Zoro was still staring out at the scenery, but he wasn't seeing it anymore. The voice, the faint smell of a cigarette on the evening breeze...

He stretched his senses. The waiter was muttering something about a ‘scruffy vagabond', with ‘the temerity to say he knew you, sir', and ‘wants something to eat'.

"Feed him," was the immediate response. Sanji's drawl was clearer than the waiter's timorous twitters.

"Um, but-"

"If you mention money, I'll use you for bait next time I go shark fishing."

"No, no, Head Chef, sir, please! I know your standing orders: if they're hungry and can reach the Baratie, they're to be fed. But-"

Zoro realized the smile on his face was particularly goofy and nostalgic, so he canned it.

The waiter had lowered his voice again. Over echoes of laughter and talk from the dining room, Zoro strained to hear ‘-refused to go into the restaurant', ‘sitting up on the poop deck', ‘says he won't be fed by anybody but you, sir.'

"Huh? Is it that old rat-bastard Gin?" The voices were louder; the two men were moving towards the stairs.

"No sir, I know Captain Gin by sight, and this is not he. I would have escorted him to the dining room, but- um, he appears to be injured..." 

Zoro shifted around in the chair, fingers mechanically brushing the crusted bandages beneath his open shirt. He was barely scratched. All things being relative. The fact the waiter had gone to fetch help because he felt _sorry_ for him-

"-um and really, sir, he looks like a bad type- actually quite scary- um, he g-gave me a l-l-look-" the waiter's voice was going up in register. Zoro relaxed, satisfied. 

Then Sanji's voice carried to him, tone dry and clearly meant to be overheard. "This scruffy bastard wouldn't have three swords, hair the colour of mouldy cheese and a really bad attitude, would he?"

"Oh, I see he's a friend of yours, sir." 

"Huh-uh. Go take care of the customers. I'll deal with this."

"Yes sir." You could float the Baratie on the waiter's wave of relief. 

Zoro didn't look around at the sound of footsteps climbing the stairs. The nearby railing creaked as it took a little weight. The smell of smoke floated over him.

They were silent until Sanji finished his cigarette and tossed it into the water.

"Got anything to eat?" Zoro asked.

Sanji leaned an elbow against the railing. "I guess I can rustle something up. You look like shit."

"Been fighting a lot."

"You say it like it's a good thing."

"Yeah." Zoro smiled. He'd been worried that after beating Mihawk, he'd have nothing left to achieve. He'd sure run into a lot of chicken-shit challengers these past six months; really small frogs in their ponds. But he'd also met a few that had made the journey worthwhile, and who'd allowed him to practice some of the things he'd learned. He'd thanked them by letting them live, when feasible. They'd be back one day, and it would be determined who had learned more in the meantime...

So yeah, everything was fine, except for that bloody feeling he got when he beat some of the best in the world, turned around and found nobody there. The feeling that he was just sailing along, doing what he wanted, and there was no-one there to aggravate him and monopolize his time and slip into his soul and take up too much room. 

"I'll get you some chow. And some booze," Sanji said, but he didn't stir. He was staring out at the All Blue, a funny look in his eye. Like he was annoyed, and puzzled, and felt a bit like Zoro had when he'd realized he had nobody around to argue with, nobody to get under his skin and stick there.

Sanji's fingers drummed on the railing. "Need a place to stay for a few days?"

"Maybe." Zoro watched a lone albatross dip over the Baratie, and decided not to be any dumber than he needed to be. "Yeah, I do."

Sanji coughed that smoker's rumble of his. When he spoke again, his voice was raspy. "The Baratie's kinda small. We're not a hotel. You can bunk with me; mine's the biggest room after Zeff's, and you wouldn't want to share with him, the old geezer's foot stinks when he takes off his sock."

Zoro wondered if this was how Nami felt when she'd figured out how the log pose worked. "Sounds good."

 

"This is it," Sanji said indifferently. 

Zoro followed him into the room and took a minute to look around. He recognized a lot of the small, personal effects dotted about the cabin. A large chest-bed with a high footboard was built into one corner of the room; above it, a shelf bearing a few books (recipes, no surprise there), and a picture of Zeff with a bratty little kid who looked quite a handful even in old sepia print. Pride of place was given to seven Wanted posters along one wall; they'd all had worthy bounties by the end. Zoro's had always been higher than Sanji's, naturally.

Sanji disappeared through a door off to one side. A cupboard closed with a click, a faucet ran. Zoro tossed down his rucksack and slipped his swords out of his belt to lean them against the wall

"Take off your shirt and those bandages," Sanji said, loudly enough to be heard over the noise of running water.

"Why?"

"So I can check your injuries, dumbass."

Zoro clutched his top defensively. "They're fine." 

"Fix them yourself with a stapler again?"

"No." Zoro had had the foresight to bring catgut and needles with him this time.

Sanji came out of the bathroom, hands washed, sleeves rolled up. He had bandages in his arms and a pig-headed look on his face, so Zoro peeled off the shirt and dressings. A jerk loosened the ones that'd gotten gummed with blood.

Sanji didn't say anything, but the muscles in his jaw went all rigid as he inspected the damage. "I'll be right back," he eventually said, teeth clenched. 

'Right back' took ten minutes. Zoro was sitting on the bed and looking at an old menu that had been used as a coaster when Sanji came back, carrying a large first-aid kit, a bottle of sake and some covered dishes on a tray. Sanji set the last aside, sat on the bed, got Zoro to turn and face him and then went to work with disinfectant, silk thread and bandages, muttering about how very, very stupid the marimo was, and how Sanji wished Chopper was there to fix him up better and also tell him how very, very stupid he was. Zoro drank straight from the bottle and watched the way the curlicue eyebrow tightened depending on the depth of the injury. After a few minutes, Sanji fell silent too. 

He was nearly finished when he spoke again. 

"You're the best in the world." He said it as simply as he'd say 'you have green hair'. "Who the hell cut you up like this?"

"Well...a fish."

Sanji finished knotting the last bandage, then he ostensibly lifted a finger and cleaned his ear with it. "Did you just say a fish?"

"Yeah. I got careless. Forget it."

"What kind of fish?"

Zoro knew how this conversation was going to end. "A fairly big one."

"I figured that much. How big?"

"Big. Look, it's nothing, it didn’t get a chance to bite me, it had scales like razorblades and some shattered when I cut it, and hit me in-"

"How big _exactly_?"

"...You remember that goldfish at Little Garden that the two giants took down?"

Sanji's brow twitched and furrowed. "Fucking. Hell."

"It was threatening an entire island."

"I'm sure it was, but that's not why you did it." Sanji was speaking in the meticulous, biting way in which he'd read out a wine-list to a beer-guzzling ignoramus. "You did it because you were bored and couldn't find anything up to challenging you."

"I was trying a new technique-"

"How long before you start floating around in a coffin killing people for kicks?"

Zoro was silent, maybe because for an instant he had to seriously consider the question. But he knew the answer. It was the answer that had led him to the Baratie, after all. "Not my style."

"Oh?"

"I have nakama who wouldn't like me doing that."

Sanji's eyes widened, then he looked away and busied himself packing the first aid kit with a bit more force than bandages normally required. "Damn right you do," he said softly. "We'll take turns kicking your ass if you try something like that again."

Of course Zoro would try something like that again. He had to keep his edge. He had to follow the path where it led him. But with Sanji - or any of the others, but Sanji was, well, here and handy - with Sanji somewhere at his back, grumbling common sense at him, Zoro knew he'd come back alive and sane each time.

Sanji shook his head, maybe coming to the same conclusion. He stood up and went to lift the cover off one of the plates. It was soup, thick, creamy, smelling divine.

"Fish stew," Sanji said with a feral grin aimed at Zoro's bandaged torso. "Karma's a bitch."

"Thanks." Zoro hadn't realized how hungry he was; that smell had kickstarted his stomach with a vengeance. He didn't reach for the dish, though. "Wait."

Sanji stopped making tracks towards the door and looked back over his shoulder.

"Have you heard from the others?" 

Zoro was pretty sure that if anything had happened, Sanji would have told him right out on the deck. Hell, if one of the notorious Straw Hats had run into trouble, the whole Grand Line would have heard about it. The others were fine, or at least alive and unharmed, which wasn't quite the same thing as fine of course- but nothing bad could have happened to them without Zoro knowing about it. He'd told himself that frequently. On a near daily basis these past two months. The constant repetitions had begun to infringe on his ability to nap and relax even when he didn't have a life-or-death battle on his hands. When he'd finally decided that enough was enough, and headed towards the Baratie, he couldn't figure out if he was losing the last portion of his sanity or regaining it.

"Of course I hear from them. Luffy docks at the Baratie on a regular basis to eat us out of business. They're all fine."

I knew they were, Zoro thought, kicking himself for the surge of relief. If something had happened to any seventh of his soul, he'd have felt it, he was sure. He picked up the dish and spoon, and took a large bite. The blend of flavours was like a teasing punch to the taste buds, in all the good ways. 

"You have the Pirate King as a patron? That's gotta draw the crowds," he said through a second mouthful. 

"It's still more trouble and expense than its worth," Sanji grumbled, and didn't even try to sound like he meant it. "As it turns out, you missed him by a couple of weeks. He'll be back sometime next month."

"You see him that often? I thought Luffy would be too busy with the pirate council and the Triumvirate."

Zoro didn't read the paper much - 'not much' being more than he used to before he had a friend whose friendly mug might appear in the shots. The new world order had a complicated political structure, but it boiled down to a three-way tug of war between the military, the new civil government, and the pirates and other free men of the Grand Line. Each section had representatives, elected or otherwise, but it seemed that the really important decisions were made by what the press had nicknamed 'the Triumvirate'; Garp, Dragon and Luffy representing the Marines, the civil authority and the pirates respectively. People who said this was nepotism at its finest had never seen three generations of Monkey Ds argue and occasionally resort to blows.

Sanji snorted. "Those guys? Are you kidding me? They can barely keep Luffy pinned down two weeks in a row. He's always off looking for adventure, or for trouble, or for his fucking first mate who upped and disappeared on him."

Zoro winced internally. "Luffy's been looking for me?"

"The ship's been following a trail of corpses for months now."

"Oh come on, don't blow it out of proportion, cook, I haven't killed that many people."

There was a glint in Sanji's eyes from behind the bangs, and though Zoro had a lot of practice ignoring Sanji's dirty looks, he'd better change the subject if he wanted some more news and not an argument or a fight.

"When you say the ship...all the others?" 

"No." A sigh leeched away the moment of huffy temper. Sanji knew the dream had ended in reality too. He went to flip open the porthole and fished out a cigarette from a rumpled pack without turning around. "Luffy travels with Shanks more often than not. And with Nami-san, of course. Ah, that ship has definitely sailed...what a pity..."

"Huh? What ship?"

"Don't burn a fuse trying to understand, pea-brain. It's beyond the grasp of an ape like yourself." Sanji sighed again, a bit theatrically, and lit up.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever. What have they been doing? And where are the others?"

The silence lasted exactly the length of time it would have taken Sanji to say 'I shouldn't have to be telling you what your nakama have been up to', but then he leaned back against the wall near the porthole, and when he spoke, that smoky voice fell into the lilt and pacing of a storyteller. 

While Zoro ate his soup, Sanji told him the tale of the Pirate King, scouring the oceans along with Red Haired Shanks, sailing around the world and pummelling anybody who dared to destroy dreams. They rarely had much of a destination in mind, but Luffy's adorable navigator kept them more or less on course anyway, working all the while on her world map. The Thousand Sunny made frequent pit stops at the university town where Robin-chan was teaching the True History - and how not to stick one's head in the sand and live in fear of the unknown - and where Chopper was studying advanced medicine and the horticulture of sakura trees under extreme conditions ("Huh?" "Don't ask, marimo, I don't get it either. And don't interrupt.") The ship sailed where the fancy took it, and when it ran into trouble, it would dock for more ammunition and a weapons upgrade at a small village in the East Blue where a Great Sea Warrior turned weapons expert would make sure it had the fangs to handle whatever the oceans threw at it next.

Zoro absently shook his head as he scraped the last figment of soup from the bowl. He'd been worried? About _that_ crew? He should have known they'd land on their feet. "Very...epic, Sanji."

"Yeah, I get to tell it to all the diners who ask me about my famous friends." 

Sanji tossed the cigarette out the porthole, stared out at the All Blue for a moment, then turned and walked over to the bed with slow, deliberate steps. He stared down at Zoro in silence before saying, in tones that cut right through the urbane façade like a knife: "Of course, you'd know all this if you hadn't disappeared." 

Zoro put the bowl down on the bed and resisted the urge to get up and face the banked surge of anger in those words. His instincts yammered that Sanji could flay him with two kicks like this and he'd be in no position to parry. Zoro told his instincts that he and they deserved what was coming so they could shut up about it.

Sanji's hands were stuffed into his pockets, but Zoro could tell his fists were clenched. "Do you know how annoying it was?" Sanji murmured.

"...annoying?"

"Each and every time they came here. Luffy never gave it a rest. 'Zoro just needs some time alone, but I'm sure he'll be back'," Sanji parodied in a gruesomely cheerful tone. "'Hey, I bet he'll be back tomorrow!' Do you know how hard that was to hear each and every time?"

Sanji had said 'annoying' the first time, not 'hard'. Zoro was wise enough not to point that out.

"...You told me earlier that Luffy's looking for me."

"He is." 

"But you just said-"

"He's looking for you so you can spend some time alone while having fun with him. What, you expect him to have mastered logic? You weren't gone that long. Just six months. Without any news, other than some grisly rumours. That's nothing, right? No fucking time at all."

He probably shouldn't argue until Sanji cooled off a little, but..."I wasn't the only one who left."

"Luffy knew where to find the rest of us."

"If any of you had needed me, I'd have been there."

"Beyond the logistics of how you'd have gotten to us in time to be useful when you have the sense of direction of a stunned goldfish in a bowl..." 

Zoro had certainly not forgotten how fast Sanji could move, and he'd been half expecting it, but he didn't try to dodge. The back of his scalp stung at the point of impact with the bed's headboard, strong fingers locked around his chin. The wooden frame groaned at the sudden weight of Sanji's knee pinning Zoro's thigh.

"What if you had needed us?" Sanji ground out, an ugly light in his eyes.

Zoro's jaw creaked as he opened his mouth against the pressure of Sanji's fingers- but he wasn't a liar by nature, and the words ‘I didn't need you guys' would be the biggest lie of all. Because he did. Damn them, he needed them all. That's why he was here- okay, specifically he was here for Sanji, which was an even harder fact to cope with, but by extension, his nakama had pulled him back in as effectively as if they'd tied him to the prow next to the figurehead. 

So he shoved Sanji's hand away and slouched back against the headboard with a grunt of irritation entirely self-directed.

Sanji's hand was back on Zoro's jaw, thumb pushing down on his lip, only to reintroduce him to that taste of smoke and spices he'd kind of missed these past few months.

The kiss was bruise-coloured, fingers tight on his skin. Zoro tried to grab Sanji's waist to apply a bit of force in return- only to have the cook move out of reach with a twist of hips as he broke the kiss. There was a clink. Sanji'd picked up the dish from the bed. He put it down on the tray, uncovered a plate of rice, meat and vegetables, and then headed towards the door.

"I'm needed back in the kitchen," he said over his shoulder, voice smooth once more. "Just leave the tray outside the door when you’re finished and get some rest."

Zoro idly rubbed his mouth with the back of his hand, eyes drifting from the closed door to the dish on the tray. Food, sleep, continue this later, huh? That sounded like a plan.

 

The tread of bare feet woke Zoro up a few hours later, the time within spitting distance of two in the morning. The night was inky-blue punctuated by flashes of yellow light from the nearby floating light-house which led diners and lost sailors to a friendly restaurant ready to feed them. Sanji was a shadow in the moments of darkness, skin pale where he was slipping off his shirt. Zoro yawned widely and stretched, feeling better than he had in weeks. Nothing like a good sleep where he knew he wouldn't be interrupted. 

He rolled over to leave Sanji some room as the cook made his way over, dressed down to boxers and t-shirt. The mattress sunk a little under the added weight. The bed was big enough for the two of them. 

"Long day?" Zoro spoke softly, but the Baratie was a heavy ship that didn't have the same pitch, roll and friendly creaks as the Merry or the Sunny. His voice sounded loud in the quiet, now that the chatter and bursts of laughter from the dining room had faded.

"Hm, this is my usual time. There's always something to take care of." Sanji's voice was even softer. He rubbed his eyes, sinking back into the single pillow. Zoro had tossed his rucksack on the bed earlier to prop his head; he was used to sleeping rough. 

Sanji was silent for a spell, eyes open, fixed on the ceiling. "Huh. This is the first time we've actually shared a bed," he finally said. The lighthouse beam jumped through the porthole to illuminate the statement, though it wasn’t that great an epiphany, really.

"Yeah. We've slept together before, though. That time on the Sunny's lawn. And in the spare sail a couple of times. And-"

"I don't have amnesia, dumbass. But I'd like to repress, because you snore, man, and-"

His words ending in a wobble of vowels as Zoro pressed his mouth down on the noisy damn cook's. 

It was pure retaliation for earlier, nothing more. Even if Zoro had half deserved - okay, maybe entirely deserved - that tongue-lashing and score-his-lips-and-leave-him-hanging moment before, that didn't mean he was going to let it go. Not his nature. But that's all it was. When Sanji's arms and legs latched on to his body and rolled him over with a practiced twist of hips, the opening gambit to the usual deal between them, it caught him off-guard.

He freed an arm, catching Sanji by the back of the neck and hoisting him away, a few inches of breathing space. 

"Wait. Wait. Isn't Zeff in the next room?" The recognizable step-clump, step-clump of a peg leg on the other side of the wooden wall had woken Zoro up an hour ago, followed by a brief squeak of bedsprings and silence. Zoro hadn't intended the kiss as an invitation, not with the old man nearby. Besides, after that tense moment earlier, it was up to Sanji to say if he wanted to pick up where they'd left off, and then they could have crept away to the hold or wherever. He didn't want to queer things with Zeff. Because he intended to stay here for awhile. 

"Yeah, the old man's next door and he's not a heavy sleeper, so don't make too much noise," Sanji breathed into Zoro's mouth. "He'll give me seven shades of hell if we wake him up."

...That was an odd thing to say and to worry about, considering what the old man would presumably try to do to Zoro, which would be worse than giving him a hard time. Wouldn't that be embarrassing, getting set upon by an ex-pirate three times his age with only one leg, and Sanji's mentor to boot. Zoro wouldn't be able to lift a finger to defend himself and would have to wait until Zeff got tired of kicking him. "Isn't he going to cut up real rough with me if he figures out?" 

"No," Sanji said shortly, leaning back.

Something odd in the way Sanji's frame had tensed..."You sure about that?" 

"Yeah. Come on." 

Sanji's body coiled against his, and damn that felt good, but suddenly Zoro's vague suspicions coalesced into near certainty. "Does he know? He does, doesn't he."

When Sanji answered, his tone was uncommunicative. "Not that it's any of your damn business, but yeah, I told him, okay?"

Zoro didn't pull Sanji towards him, despite the way he wanted to toss him down and grind him into the mattress, because suddenly this seemed really important. "You told him what?"

"Fuck, did you get dumber these last six months? What do you think I told him, the recipe for vegetable soup? Shit."

"Wait." Not to be distracted, Zoro managed to catch Sanji's wrists, one leg looped around Sanji's calves to keep him still, their faces close. "What did you tell him, Sanji."

A short silence and a wash of breath like a silent, put-upon sigh. "That we were lovers back on the Sunny," Sanji muttered.

Ah...

Sanji stifled a gasp as Zoro damn near picked him up and nailed him to the squeaking mattress, mouth too hungry for a kiss and settling on Sanji's throat instead. Like an automatic parry-thrust riposte, hammered into their bodies by months of repetition, Sanji shifted his weight straight into the momentum and shoved at the hips, rolling them over again-

Zoro's back hit the wall with a thump loud enough to sink the Baratie. Both men flinched, the body-language equivalent of 'oh shit!' They listened, Zoro's hands frozen mid-motion halfway up Sanji's top, back pressed against the wood as if trying to muffle the vibrations. The sound of waves became louder in the silence that pooled out around them; the creak of wood; the rustle of night breeze in the riggings. Zoro's senses centered on a faint noise; the regular rasp of snoring. Now, maybe he was being paranoid, but that thud really should have woken up someone of Zeff's one-time reputation, and did that snore sound ever so slightly fake...?

Sanji's barely-there whisper caressed his skin. "Guess that's the disadvantage of being in a bed." 

"Hm. Want to do this tomorrow, somewhere else?" The greatest swordsman in the world had a strong will and discipline, even with a boner powered by half a year of abstinence in his pants. 

The answer was non-verbal; the lick of Sanji's tongue parting Zoro's lips, sending a trail of pleasant shudders down his spine. Sanji tugged him back towards the center of the bed, gently enough to keep the blasted bedsprings from chiming in, and then pushed one leg between Zoro's, moving against him oh fuck...

Zoro's hands rediscovered familiar paths up Sanji's back, the dip between shoulder blades under his top, skin and muscles and more skin...He'd had to do it. He'd had to leave for this long, to figure out where the others ended and his own strength began. His will was his weapon as much his swords. He'd managed not to think of this. He'd managed not to miss it. The scent, the taste, the way Sanji panted, the feel of a hard-on rubbing against his thigh, the power in the body beneath his fingertips. 

He just hoped he'd never have to impose that kind of restraint on himself again. Not for that long a time. Half a year. Damn. It was unravelling now- but- go slowly, slowly, make it last... 

Sanji's hands were careful over Zoro's back and front, avoiding bandages, and harder when they caressed his neck and thighs. Fingers slipped beneath Zoro's pants, sliding over his ass, wrist dragging the cloth down. And that reminded Zoro of something. Looked like their usual athletic humping was out of the question, and it wasn't the right night for a trade of blow-jobs, so...He rolled onto his back, dragging Sanji with him, hands settling on the cook's rump. Before Sanji could remind him for the hundredth time that he didn't like that - and then letting Zoro paw away to his heart's content anyway - Zoro leaned up to whisper against open lips, "Are you finally going to screw me?"

There was a strangled sound as Sanji's words piled up behind his teeth and stayed there. He didn’t have to say anything, though; the set of his frame went instantly from flexible to stubborn, like the last couple of times Zoro had mentioned it, back on the Sunny.

Zoro hadn't pressed before, because if the dumbass didn't want to do it, fine, Zoro didn't care that much, he'd just been curious to try. But tonight was different. Tonight, the word 'lover' meant Sanji at least had to give him a reason for being so cagey about it when his body language kept saying he was dying for it. Hell, 'body language' made it sound too subtle; a month before Raftel, Zoro had managed to roll them both around until he was plastered to Sanji's back, pressing the tough, lithe body against his, and then he'd brought himself off shoving against the black pants and the crease of that nicely muscular ass and Sanji had let him - and then, when Zoro was done, he'd been flipped over and the favour returned with a lot of enthusiasm. But then Sanji was off the spare sail like a scalded cat the second he'd finished, and that hadn't happened again, stupid, convoluted love-cook...

"...We...don't have to." At least Sanji wasn't saying 'I don't want to' like last time. Progress, thought Zoro sarcastically. "Even men who are...who don't mind doing it with other guys, don't always go for that. They say it hurts, and, you know. You won't like it."

'They' had no idea what pain was, not on the level Zoro and Sanji regularly visited. "Hmyeah, shouldn't be a problem. If it sucks, we just won't do it anymore."

There was a moment of silence, and when Sanji spoke again, it was straightforward. "I was raised on a ship. When you're a sailor, there's words for guys who take it up the ass. You grow up with that, and it sort of sticks."

Johnny and Yosaku set up a chorus of 'yeahs' in Zoro's mind. Zoro ignored them. It didn't apply to him, since he didn't like men; he liked nicotine-scented love-cooks who made life way too complicated and who kicked things a lot. "I told you I wanted you to screw me, I never asked you to let me take a turn-" 

"You wouldn’t have to _ask_ ," Sanji snarled, way too loudly.

Another round of silence, listening to the wind, the waves and Zeff's snores next door which, to Zoro, were sounding more and more artificial. Well fine, let the old man listen if that's what got his rocks off these days, or else he could stuff a pillow over his head and recite his favourite recipes to himself. 

"But you want to do me anyway," Zoro said, dismissing the old coot from his thoughts.

A loaded silence was his answer. Poor cook, caught between 'oh fuck, yes', and knowing that he _would_ put out in turn, for reasons that fell halfway between being rivals and equals, and not willing to let Zoro do him any favours.

"Fine. So this is how we do it. I'll go first," Zoro said, the very spirit of compassion. "If it hurts more than a pansy cook can handle-"

"Oi."

"- or if I feel my dick suddenly getting smaller, then we won't swap around, because we wouldn't want you getting any prissier than you already are."

Sanji's noise of irritation broke into a short, harsh laugh. "You fucker, you just never give me an inch, do you." 

"Like you'd want me to." 

"I guess not," Sanji whispered, and then his voice fell into a smoking-hot register. "Turn over then."

The darkness hid Zoro's triumphant smirk as he pulled off the rest of his clothes and turned over- then he twisted right around again when he felt Sanji scramble off the bed and head towards the bathroom with a mutter of "I'll use hand-lotion". Okay, the prissy jab had been a _joke_ \- oh wait...yeah. Zoro rolled over onto his stomach again, remembering some of Johnny and Yosaku's cruder insults. Some Marine had stiffed them on a bounty, and then expected them to 'bend over and take it without lube, that bastard-'

Sanji was back on the bed, along with a completely inappropriate flowery scent that would be the hand-lotion. He was breathing in staccato gasps, fingers touching Zoro's hips and shaking a little. Zoro twisted his head around, but couldn't see anything other than Sanji's outline against the sudden slash of raw light through the porthole. His fingers knotted in the sheets to stop himself from shoving against a crease of cloth teasing his dick. "Oi, Sanji-"

"Look- I'm okay with doing this - and everything - but maybe-" Sanji's voice was one long tortured ache. "It's been six bloody months and that's your fault, you prick, and I just don't think- maybe we should do this tomorrow because I-I-uh-..."

"I'm not going to last long either," Zoro said, getting to his knees and glancing over his shoulder, "but I still want you to fuck me."

Sanji made a sort of 'ghnugh' sound, one that Zoro instantly liked. Then his lover piled into Zoro, pushing him forward. Fingers fastened like sailor's knots around his hips, leaving imprints down to the bone by the feel of it, and his ass was nudged hard. Sanji didn't muck around; after a brief scrabble and a truly foul curse under his breath, he managed to shove it in with three rough heaves. About as subtle as Sanji's spin-kicks, and that was fine by Zoro. He braced his palms against the mattress and pushed back instinctively, all his focus on what was happening inside his body. A pulling feel around the asshole...and a dull sensation firing up his spine, probably a bit of pain not making it onto his thoroughly blunted receptors. 

And the other feeling. The one of having Sanji there. Inside. Having _Sanji_ there. _Inside_.

...Thank god for Sanji dicking around about this earlier, because that short conversation had given Zoro's arousal a chance to calm down a little, so to speak. Despite that, right now, right this instant - _inside_ \- he wanted to come so badly it fucking hurt - _six months, shit_ \- and Sanji had barely started yet.

And still Zoro wanted to feel _more_!

Sanji was whimpering like a girl, the kind of sounds he'd never make otherwise, not even under torture. They hitched into a fettered gasp as Zoro straightened up, back knocking into Sanji's chest. Sanji's dick almost slipped out, but instinct was a wonderful thing when keyed into the sex drive and he took all of one second to find the new angle at which to move. An arm went around Zoro's throat to keep him still, an inch away from a stranglehold, an edge of violence that went down perfectly well with him. Zoro moved anyway, forcing Sanji in deeper, getting more more more of that, the dull-pain sensation splintering into a whole host of sharp-edged pleasures, the kind that could never have a name. Oh shit- and Sanji said there were guys who didn't like this? What was wrong with those poor wimps.

Zoro clenched around the heat and shape piledriving into him, trying to wring more out of this, and the noise Sanji made went straight to Zoro's libido and waved a few more flags. He did it again, while his palm slipped over his dick. Three-four repetitions, Sanji shoving into him, making low-keening noises when Zoro tightened or shoved back, but Zoro wasn't moving as much now, focus intent on bringing himself off. _Six fucking months!_

The hand near his throat reached for his chin and forced his face around, earrings grinding between his neck and Sanji's wrist. Sanji didn't kiss him so much as pant in and around his mouth and whisper - brief words caught against skin - more, move like _that_ again, yes again, don't stop- It figured he'd be a talker. Zoro said nothing; his breath ratcheted and caught, sensations piling up like the first swell of tsunamis. 

It picked him up and crashed him down- no, that was Sanji, who'd shoved him into the mattress once the rush had plunged through Zoro and wrung him out into his hands and cast him adrift in a warm, dark place...He didn't even know when Sanji had gotten off...pity...oh well, next time...

There was a slimy spot beneath his stomach. Zoro rubbed his nose and rolled away from it, pitching a lazy-ass cook off his back. Sanji muttered something foul but didn't even move from where he'd slid off, his arm a warm weight resting over Zoro's, crossed near the wrists.

"Okay, that _was_ a bit short," Zoro said, eventually stirring. 

"You didn’t last any longer than I did, dipshit," said Sanji into the mattress.

"Now that we got the edge off, let's do it again."

"Oi..." Sanji slapped away the hand reaching for him. "I was working all day while you were sleeping, numbnuts. And look at the time."

Zoro glanced at the darkness outside the porthole, occasionally slashed to ribbons by the lighthouse. "Three hours to dawn, I make it. So?"

"So not too long after that, I have to get up and do my job."

Zoro let his hand fall resignedly. Oh yeah, cooking. He didn't want to distract Sanji from his life's work, that wouldn't be fair. That was assuming he could distract the chef. Wouldn't that be a burn to the ego; stood up in favour of a few pots and pans.

He was halfway through that thought when he fell asleep, as deeply as he ever had on board a ship surrounded by friends.

 

Zoro's senses sized up the situation before he was even half-awake. The pissant hammering on the door wasn't at a level where he'd be a danger even if he attacked while Zoro was fast asleep. Zoro made no attempt to wake up any further.

"Hey, crap-Head Chef, sir! Owner Zeff says, what the fuck are you doing, you're an hour behind already."

Sanji stirred from where he was using Zoro's back as a pillow, and sat up abruptly with a dazed "Wha-?" 

But it was too late. The nuisance had tried the door, found it unlocked and stuck his head in. "Hey, you idiot, why are- whoa! Fuck me!"

"Carne," Sanji said in his deadly voice, like a rope of raw silk knotting around someone's throat, "if you ever barge into my room again, I will kick your head into your chest and out your ass."

Familiarity must breed contempt, because this Carne didn't seem to notice a tone that even Zoro would be wary of. "Soooo I seeeeee...What do I tell Owner, that you're too busy rolling around the sheets with 'the old friend come to stay'?"

Sanji defiantly threw the blanket back, revealing that he'd gotten dressed again last night, but not throwing it far enough to drag it off Zoro, who hadn't bothered. "We're just sharing a bed, you gutter-minded freak."

"Oh, won't the ladies be disappointed when I tell them-"

Eyes still closed, Zoro reached to where he'd propped his swords near the bed yesterday. The first scabbard he grabbed was Kitetsu's, which was rapidly suiting his mood. He put his thumb against the tsuba and sprang one inch of steel clear.

"I'll just go to the kitchen," Carne said quickly and vanished.

"Hey, I can deal with my shitty cooks myself," Sanji muttered, kicking Zoro's shins beneath the layers of blanket and sheets.

Zoro yawned. "Then deal with him quicker next time."

"Fucker." The bedsprings squeaked as Sanji clambered over him to get out of the bed.

Zoro buried his nose in the pillow. He needed to recoup some stamina. The grazes he'd collected weren't as bad as Sanji had made them out to be, but he had been fighting pretty strenuously for the past half year, and he'd not been able to sleep much on the ships over here. 

There were dressing noises in the background, not loud enough to keep him from slowly sinking into full sleep again. Then a weight settled on the bed next to him and kept him from letting go entirely. He felt the sheet being tugged down to reveal his back, and then fingertips ran down his dorsals and spine.

"What," he muttered into the pillow.

"You really don't have any scars on your back..." A finger nudged aside strips of bandages binding the pads over the wounds on Zoro's abdomen.

Zoro went from two thirds asleep to half awake. "I don't?" 

"You sound surprised." A caress over the area where Zoro had been pierced through with a black sword shard, fingertips feeling for a mark which had faded since. 

"I never really checked, but I imagined I had some...I took a couple of slices when I was really young. I also got pounded into walls and sharp pointy things a few times, and flash-burned all over by that bastard Ener."

"Hm, don't remind me. But Chopper would have patched those up, so they wouldn't have scarred it they weren't too deep. I know mine didn't. No, your back is smooth. Unlike your front, which looks like macramé."

"Grmphom."

"What was that?"

"Don't you have work to do?" 

"Yeah, I've already fed the rumour mill enough for one day." The bed quivered as Sanji stood up and headed towards the door. "When you wake up, drop by the kitchen and get some food; you need to get back into shape. The kitchen's down the hall, turn left, and then the first door to your left again. You remember which one is your left? It's on the same side you generally hold Kitetsu."

"Ha. Ha. Ha."

"Hey, I'm just giving you a hand here. Though maybe I should give you a map and a compass instead."

"You live to annoy me, don't you."

There was a smirk in Sanji's voice. "No, I live for the All Blue and cooking. Annoying you is just a pastime."

"Getout."

The door clicked shut. Zoro nestled down into the pillow and sheets. The bed smelled like sex and Sanji, but it couldn't make wisecracks. Zoro liked this bed. They were going to get along just fine.

 

When Zoro swung open the double doors and strode into the kitchen, the bustle of chatter and hurried orders fractured into a single second of utter silence, before quickly reassembling into a caricature of its former self as all the cooks pretended to carry on with what they were doing. The only person who really didn't deign to mark Zoro's entrance was at the end of the kitchen, chopping something with a wickedly large knife, stolid and uncompromising from his overgrown chef's hat and broad shoulders down to his sturdy peg leg.

Zoro sat down at a high table loaded with clean dishes and cutlery wrapped in napkins. Sanji wasn't around; probably in the dinning room. Zoro could wait. On a certain level, he was aware of the covert stares and whispers, but people who weren't armed didn't register much with him. 

The fabricated bustle faded into an attentive hush. 

"Roronoa Zoro," Zeff said, a curt greeting as he stopped by the table. 

"Zeff." 

The old chef wiped his hands on a towel. The bigass knife was stuck through his belt. "I heard you'd come aboard. You staying long?"

There was some strain in the air, in fact if it wound any tighter the plates would start to crack, but open confrontation suited Zoro much better than underhand resentment. "Yeah, as a matter of fact, I am."

Cooks throughout the kitchen froze in mid-motion, knives, ladles, pots and pans poised, gazes going from Zoro to Zeff.

And...it was odd...but that blunt answer, which might have been seen as a challenge, seemed to relax something in the old ex-pirate instead. He snorted, and unbent enough to give Zoro a Look. It was a very condensed Look. It said, I know what you've achieved and I'm mildly impressed by that, but I also saw you get spanked by Mihawk in front of this very restaurant so don't get too big for your boots, boy. Then Zeff turned around with a grumble. "I'll get you something to eat. Presumably that's what you're wasting space in my kitchen for."

Zoro had been around Sanji long enough to know a truce when he saw it. When Zeff in person slammed the plate down on the table in front of him, it could even stretch as far as a backhanded blessing. Hot damn... 

He still hadn't puzzled out the origins of Zeff's attitude, when Sanji stalked into the cabin a couple hours later, kicked Zoro out of his nap and went all alpha-male on him for telling Zeff he was staying long-term on the Baratie without running it past Sanji first. It was fair enough, since this was Sanji's territory, so Zoro rested against the bed's headboard and let his lover chew him out a bit.

"What?" Zoro had the feeling he'd missed something important. He wound back through Sanji's dead-pan sarcasms, insults and upbraiding until he came to the bit that had caught his attention. "Work?"

"Is the notion so foreign to you that you don't even know the fucking word, shithead?" 

"I know what work is. What about it?"

Sanji stared at him. "You didn't hear a word I said, did you."

"I heard what mattered. You need a job done? Just ask me already."

Sanji continued to stare. Then he leaned his elbows against the bed's high footboard, stuck his face in his hands and spoke through his fingers so softly that a suddenly alarmed Zoro barely made out his words. "I must be brain-damaged...but it's how much I missed you these past months, that I managed to find that moronically funny rather than infuriating..."

"...Thanks." Zoro would have been a lot smoother if the cook had shouted or thrown a kick. He knew how to handle that.

"Zoro..." Sanji let one of his hands fall, he looked tired. "How long are you planning to stay?"

"I don't know. But I'll do odd jobs around the place, if that's the problem."

"That's not the problem, and _I_ need to know," Sanji said quietly.

There wasn't much to say to that, was there, apart from the truth. "It's not that simple, Sanji...if I stay in one spot for any length of time, some people will eventually come here to challenge me. Maybe that's to my advantage; I won't have to go looking for matches to keep my edge. But it'll make for some very strange guests to your place. Some of them won't care about fighting fair, either. So...staying here for good might not work out too well."

"Oh." Sanji was silent for a long minute, weighing both what Zoro had said and not said. And then he straightened, stuck his hands in his pockets and nodded curtly. "Just don't bust up the boat when you kick their asses."

Zoro stared at him. He'd been hoping to come back often, between months of wandering. That'd been the half-formulated plan, because Sanij was a cook, he shouldn't have to put up with bloodshed on his doorstep and the risk to the Baratie. "Are you sure?"

"What, you think I can't cope with a bit of mayhem? Who'd you think I sailed with for a year? Get over yourself, you're not the only tough pirate around, dickhead." The flicker of a wan smile brushed Sanji's lips. It looked involuntary. "I spend my days in the kitchen, but I still know what's worth fighting for."

Feh, of course. Toughest damn cook on the Grand Line, and a bloody force of nature when he had something to protect. Zoro really had been gone too long if he'd forgotten that. 

Zoro almost asked 'are you sure' again, out of honesty and because he couldn't quite let himself believe it, but the way his lover lowered his head, eyes glinting through the bangs, said that Sanji was smart enough to figure out all the consequences of his choices and strong enough to accept them, and a stupid marimo better not suggest otherwise.

Zoro leaned back slowly against the headboard and slipped his arms behind his head. "Well then...maybe I'll stay for a good long while. I hear the food's eatable in this joint." He figured he had the same lame smile as Sanji on his face, but that was okay. "So, you needed some work done around the place?"

"Yeah. You've not been here twenty four hours and Zeff is already calling you the shitty freeloader." Sanji gave the door a sour look.

Zoro smirked. "He likes me, huh?" 

Sanji muttered something about being the only sane person on board, as if he was one to talk.

Zoro scratched an itch beneath one of the bandages. After the quality food and napping, his fiddly little injuries were all but healed; he'd shed Sanji's band-aids as soon as the latter's back was turned and take a shower. "I don't mind helping out, but I don't know anything about cooking."

A look of pain crossed Sanji's features. "Please don't remind me. I still have nightmares about the chicken and the charcoal briquettes. No, I've got a job that needs doing, hourly rates, and it doesn't involve mixing you with a kitchen in any capacity. You get to sleep most of the time, and occasionally wake up and fight."

Zoro looked at him suspiciously. "I'd get _paid_ for this?"

"Huh-uh. Just not very much. You do get bed and board, though."

That made it a better deal than bounty-hunting had ever been. "Who do I have to kill?"

Sanji tilted his head towards the porthole over his shoulder. "All the pirates who think the Baratie and its customers are easy pickings. We've had some attacks, and I don't want the waiters jumping ship all over again. I'm too busy in the kitchen to worry about details like rampaging armadas heading our way. One thing though; you fight on their ships, not this one. I don't want the place damaged."

Zoro scratched his head. "I can do that. So I'm your bodyguard?"

"Like I need that. No, you'll be our bouncer. It means you get to deal with rowdy customers, too, and you'll have to wear something approximately clean, and a tie."

"Feh, I knew there was a catch."

"S'up to you."

Zoro looked at him thoughtfully. "Your job's tempting. Just one thing though...do I still get to sleep with the boss? Knowing one of your cooks will be getting us out of bed most mornings," he added, before Sanji could delude himself into thinking that Zoro had learned the value of discretion these past few months.

Sanji looked like he'd swallowed live bait. "That's not the way a proper establishment works."

Zoro crossed his arms over his chest and gave him a barefaced stare. "Then we have a problem." 

All Roronoa Zoro had to his name was three blades, a title, six crazy nakama and _this_ , whatever this thing with Sanji was; he was damned if he was going to leave it hanging in the wind any longer. 

And maybe Mihawk was right and it would be too hard to keep hold of even this much now that Zoro was at the top, but he was damned if he wasn't going to try. He'd take the challenge and hold on, as hard as he could and for as long as he could manage. He'd figured out this much on his own. Sanji and the others weren't optional. They'd been there when he was made, they were part of the pattern of his life. He'd find a way to keep them safe without giving them up, or he'd not been Monkey D Luffy's first mate for over a year. And in turn, they'd make him stronger than ever.

Sanji stared moodily at a spot above Zoro's head, hands stuffed in his pockets. "Of course, we still employ Patty and Carne, so who the fuck am I trying to fool about this being a proper establishment? Your stuff's in here already, it'd be a waste of everyone's time moving it."

Zoro grinned, willing to let the lame excuse slide this time because he was feeling too damn good to strong-arm the real words out of his pigheaded lover. "Sweet. You have yourself a bouncer."

 

Things settled down. For all of a month. 

"Come on, guys!" The great Pirate King hung like putty from the figurehead of the Sunny. A grin that looked twice as big as his face was level with them as they stood on the Baratie's upper deck. "It's an island nobody's seen. And it moves! It's never twice in the same spot! It's a mystery island! COME ON! Now that we have Zoro back, we _have_ to go see!"

"We need to find out what's causing the abnormal sea currents in that area," Nami said from where she was sitting on the railing, frowning at a map. "The Triumvirate have decided it's a danger to coastal waters, especially since it's hard to figure out where this island will show up next, and it's surrounded by massive whirlpools. They want it investigated."

"When you say ‘the Triumvirate decided', you mean Dragon and Garp were arguing about who should deal with it while the Pirate King was already packing his bags instead of voting," Zoro interpreted. 

"Something like that."

"Oi, aren't you supposed to be his voice of reason?"

"Yes, I guess I am, but I wanted to see it too," Nami said, eyes sparkling. "A moving island is going to screw up my maps. And besides, there's talk of lost treasure on it."

"Right, you're the voice of greed, too."

"Be polite to Nami-san!" 

Zoro parried the kick without looking. 

Luffy's words tumbled over each other. "We're picking up Robin and Chopper from university - Usopp's already on board, he's tinkering with our cannons." That explained the explosion earlier that had drawn the restaurant's Head Chef and bouncer out on the deck to watch the ship's approach. "He's making them so they can launch harpoons to catch the island. Isn't that amazing?! We're going to catch an island!"

Zoro glanced at Sanji. "The thing is, Luffy...I don't know if we can leave the Baratie for that long."

Sanji took the cigarette out of his mouth. "Hey, old man!" he bellowed over his shoulder in the direction of the kitchen. 

Zeff, who must have been eavesdropping to be able to materialize so quickly, poked his head around the doorway. "What do you want?" He had what looked like fish-guts hanging from his fingers. Zeff spent his days exploring the culinary potential of the All Blue fish species, especially the weirder ones Zoro wouldn't have used for bait.

"Crap-geezer, can you take over the kitchen for me for awhile? Say, the next two months?"

"What?! You blasted kid, I'm supposed to be retired here!" 

"You're still co-owner on paper. Act like it."

"And I bet you're taking our bouncer, too."

"He's not taking me, I'm taking myself," Zoro growled. "Luffy, do we get cabins on that tub of yours?"

Luffy's wide-eyed gaze went from the ship behind him to Zoro and back again. "It's the Thousand Sunny, Zoro. You've been on it before. Don't you remember it?"

"He's going to make some kind of grand announcement, Luffy. Don't derail him with things like the obvious," Sanji murmured.

"The cook and I share a room," Zoro said, hoping it didn't sound as lame-ass as it did to his ears, now that the comic duo had chipped in. From the way Nami snickered behind her map, it did.

"Okay!" Luffy turned to Nami with an elastic frown. "Was this the thing we still aren't supposed to talk about? Does it count if they're staying together on the Sunny instead of on the Baratie?"

"I'll go pack before I kill somebody," Sanji muttered, stalking away with his fists in his pockets.

"Hurry up!" Luffy had already forgotten what it was he was not supposed to talk about. "It's a great day for an adventure!"

That it was, Zoro decided. The air was rich with brine, the water slapped against the ship's hull and a flock of seagulls was going bonkers around the Sunny's mast. 

That it was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Writing in Zoro POV is fun, and relaxing. Short sentences, no-frills vocab...love it :D
> 
> There is a sort-of follow-up ficlet to this, called Happy Endings and its sequel. As it is radically different in tone and from Sanji's POV, as well as different in some significant details, I don't really consider it officially part of Hamon, not enough to add it to the chapters. However it uses the end of Hamon as a starting off premise.


End file.
